Founder's Desk
Gurpreet Singh
Smile and Show up Foundation – From origin to outcome
At the onset, I would like to share that I was immensely encouraged by your observation that the construct of Smile and Show Up Foundation is indeed robust and many a compassionate project can be shaped beautifully. This is exactly what my intent was when I conceived Smile and Show Up Foundation – start small with Chandigarh and ripple out to Punjab, Haryana, J&K. While the thought may appear ambitious, the reality remains that the impact has takers that outnumber the laggards. This gets established here in my case as well – within a couple of weeks I could manage to onboard 11 dentists, 2 medicos, 1 technocrat, and a well-wisher from Bangalore too is getting a known climatologist aligned to my cause.
It is absolutely appropriate that I take this opportunity to share my thoughts and team’s efforts. While the outcomes for the work are for Pets, People, and Planet, the origin lies in health, shelter, and climate.
This might sound audacious, but the origin lies in an insight that whatever comes inherent to us, we humans start taking things for granted. Unfortunately, the first victim to this behavior always remains governance, and as this applies in full measure to citizens of the tri-city and the parent states to which we form the capital of.
I believe it just takes a smile to solve these lacks of governance.
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The world-acclaimed master plan of the city, in its 72 years of existence, is not able to attract foreign tourists—a hard thing to believe, the governance is ambling around building infrastructure, failing to address the mere physicality of the physical form. This can be best done with smiles, might sound hard to believe, but it is simple. The city needs to make the world aware of the medical prowess that it holds here and therefore attract medical tourism. My premise gains ground from the stellar faculty at PGIMER – starting from Capt. (Dr.) Tulsi Das, Dr. Santokh Singh Anand, Dr. I.C. Pathak, Dr. Chakkiri Balakrishnan, Dr. B.N. Aikat, Dr. K.S. Chug, Dr. J.S. Chopra, Dr. P.N. Chutani, Dr. O.N. Bhakoo, Dr. J.G. Jolly—all global stalwarts with numerous students shining bright in the medical fraternity worldwide.
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Taking a leaf out of this library, I set out to study the potential 400+ dental clinics hold ground. You will agree, dentistry – non-emergency, is procedure-led, and treatment can be delivered from 600 sq meter clinics. My model here is cooperative-based; the signed-up dentists will cater to the foreign tourists that the foundation will attract through a global social media campaign. The earnings these clinics will make, they will contribute a percentage to build a world-class procedure lab – called CERAC lab in the city. Currently, only two in India, one in Delhi and one in Kerala, dentists send the data to these labs for developing state-of-the-art 3D printed implants, prosthetics, etc. My plan is to make Chandigarh the
WORLD CAPITAL OF DENTISTRY.
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In parallel, I also noticed that India, for 300,000 registered dentists, has only 6,630 para-dental personnel. These are dental hygienists, dental mechanics, and dental assistants. Currently, the freshly passed-out BDS are employed by established clinics – a case of lapse in governance once again, a qualified BDS reduced to deliver at a wage a skilled diploma holder can earn. To address this education-skill gap, I am in discussion with Dr. Raj Nehru, OSD to the CM of Haryana – to start an 18-month-long Para-Dental course in 10+ dental colleges in Haryana, on the similar lines of B.Sc. Physiotherapy. Incidentally, paramedical courses are making many rural youths employable. I expect this para-dental course will serve right.
While this takes me closer to making Chandigarh THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL SMILES, I feel this task shall remain incomplete until I reach every home and make this a movement. I wish to reach out to schools and citizens:
i) SCHOOL PROGRAM: My premise is school in nothing but an acronym – that now needs to be expanded as Smiling Children Harbor Opportunities to Outshine Legacy. My plan is to start a screening and awareness program in schools and empower doctors conducting these camps with a digital scorecard. Every child screened will be segregated as either healthy or unhealthy. The cumulative score of the school will then pronounce it as a healthy school or otherwise. The digital scorecard will then give me statistics to announce the three most healthy schools in Tricity year after year. I propose instituting this and honoring the three winning schools with trophies. I hope with this, I will be able to lay a foundation for ZERO CAVITIES in Chandigarh.
ii) With citizens, my plan is to encourage them to upload their smiling pictures on the Smile and Show Up Foundation portal. The pictures will be voted on by fellow citizens, and the picture with the most votes will be the winner of the sector.
iii) In order to maintain data privacy, I have applied for HIPAA compliance – a world standard in healthcare record maintenance and data privacy.
iv) I believe these are a few steps that will not only help me make Chandigarh The City of Beautiful Smiles, but also address the 13% of the population of the city struggling with mental health issues, with 70% of adolescents succumbing to stress – nothing short of alarming. I need help in addressing this too.
v) While I have no empirical data, I am sure the demon of the Punjab drug crisis would have cast its evil shadow on the youth of Chandigarh as well. I am convinced that this can be addressed by approaching the drug menace as a mental health issue, perhaps doing so will have more takers than labeling the sufferers as addicts.
vi) You will agree that Punjab needs a STATE INSTITUTE OF MENTAL HEALTH. It will be a great service for all of North India. NIMHANS Bangalore and CIP Kanke, Ranchi’s research and education of mental health sciences are failing to scale and map the entire country. Likewise, PGIMER and Dr. Vidya Sagar Hospital at Amritsar are falling short in addressing the mental health scenarios of the state.
I was very amused to recently find that Chandigarh has added a policy in the master plan preventing residents from disposing of dead pets in the garbage collection points. The policy fails to build a dedicated place for the citizens to rest their pets in dignity. Gurmehar Gandhi, a volunteer with us, triggered our thoughts on this a quarter ago.
Please allow me to highlight – my plan for the strays:
With winters coming, I wish to make warmth pods for the familiar four-legged coexistence. Not exactly a kennel, but a place with quilt(s), shelter, water, and maybe food for the night. It sounds very ambitious, but you will agree it is the need of the hour.
Likewise, newspapers and media did some knee-jerk reporting of making the city NET ZERO by 2030. What is really worth thinking about is that a city that boasts perhaps the best per capita green coverage in the world is at the cusp of wagering the aftereffects of climate change.
In order to manage this, I plan to involve the youth of the city via hackathons – called CHANDIGARH CLIM-A-THON, helping develop an app for each individual’s carbon footprint calculator and collectively build Chandigarh as the biggest carbon exchange for the world.
The vision goes beyond all these to raise a corps of volunteers. I wish to call in the Bhagat Puran Singh Seva Corps, spreading across North India.
Here I would like to mention a “SUPER VOLUNTEERING EFFORT”:
Dr. Onkar Gupta – starting the family physician initiative – being available on call and visiting home emergencies anytime from 7 pm to 7 am.
Dr. Karan Seth – running periodic dental camps at the Blind School.
Sudhanshu Gupta, our volunteer from Bangalore, is supporting us with the ‘CITY SMILE INDEX’ – he wishes to release this stellar work on 01.01.2026. His cause is to make Chandigarh the most livable city in the world by 2053, on the 100th year of Chandigarh.
Shaguna Khetrpal – wishes to spread smiles and oral health by infusing natural flavors to traditional ‘DATUN’ twigs.
Aditi Rana, our volunteer from Ludhiana, is constantly writing content to map the 72 years of Chandigarh.
I urge you all to come with ideas.
I read your thoughts correctly all this needs a lot of funds, and for that, I shall be soon embarking on specific campaigns for CSR funding, actively seeking your efforts in how to achieve this.
I also seek 30 minutes of your time, every week, to map the journey from origins to outcomes.
I am sorry to snowball you with my ideas, but I am sure you will agree that a vision well shared with the like-minded makes the vision achieved faster and surer.