• October 15, 2026

Before it was a foundation, it was a feeling. A thread between two people who had never met, yet somehow already knew. That the world, for all its polish and policy, remains incomplete without those we too often overlook. That disability is not a deficit, but a different choreography of being. The Smiling Dandelion Foundation was born from this shared recognition – that beneath the labels, polite nods, and banners of “acceptance,” there lies a deeper calling: to build a world that realizes it was never whole without those pushed to its edges.

It started in 2021, Shivani Dhillon spoke on The Good Vibes Show, the way people do when the truth has finally found a voice – steady, unhurried, tender. She talked about her young daughter with Down syndrome, the surprises that teach, the systems that fail, the joy that refuses to dim, and love that refuses to be narrowed down to diagnosis. For most, the episode ended when the credits rolled. For somebody else, it was only the beginning. Somewhere, someone had been reached.

That someone was Rahul Jindal, who had a young son with autism. He stumbled upon her interview one evening, not expecting much, and yet something about it disarmed him – the candor, the unstudied warmth, the rare feeling that she wasn’t performing for an audience. Almost without thinking, he sent a message on LinkedIn, telling her that he would love to talk to her.

When Shivani came across his text days later, it barely registered as extraordinary. She answered the way one might when there’s no reason not to: Sure, let me know when you’re free. She thought the exchange might fade into the static of all the other half-begun conversations the internet collects. Moments later her screen flickered with his response. From the backseat of a taxi, Rahul sent a message that collapsed all the polite distance of scheduling into a single line: How about now?

It was absurd, really. A stranger in transit, asking to speak. She could easily have said no. But something in Shivani leaned forward, curious, and so she picked up. On that call, Rahul talked about his son, about raising a child with disabilities, about the endless questions that seemed to have no answers, about the urgency to create something better. Then, almost offhand, he asked: Do you want to start an organisation with me? Every sensible part of her hesitated. She didn’t know him. She hadn’t even seen his face, just a name on a screen. Trusting him made no sense. And yet, Shivani remembers it felt instant, like something had been waiting for her all along, like the stars themselves had shifted into place.

What should have been a single cautious conversation unfurled into a thread of WhatsApp messages between the two cities of Chandigarh and Hyderabad, Zoom calls, and a growing conviction that the work was bigger than both of them. Within a year, they had a name, registration papers and an organization. And still, they hadn’t met in person. It would be months before their first handshake, but by then the thing they had built was already rea: the Smiling Dandelion Foundation.

But why the dandelion? In search for a name for their organisation, they found their compass in a simple Japanese verse:

“Trampled, and trampled again, still it blooms, the smiling dandelion.”

The dandelion, often overlooked as an unwanted weed, yet luminous in its defiance, spoke to what they believed. The dandelion insists on rising. No one plants it, yet it glows like a small sun in the cracks of ordinary ground. It endures, it scatters, it returns. Children with disabilities carry that same radiance. They are dismissed, mislabeled, overlooked, and yet they rise. Like the dandelion, they root deep, flow with the wind, and scatter joy into places no one thought possible. They smile without needing to be chosen. The Smiling Dandelion Foundation exists to embrace that spirit: to remind us that inclusion is not charity, but recognition, that the garden was never complete without them.

We walk alongside children and young adults with disabilities to create spaces where they are not “included” as a gesture, but as a truth. Where they are not measured by their resemblance to “normal,” but honored for their uniqueness. Where art, storytelling, education, and empathy intersect – not in a curriculum, but in a culture.

In the dandelion, we see a metaphor for the people we serve – uninvited, but irreplaceable. Gentle, yet defiant. And in every child’s laughter, in every story shared, in every day that we get to witness growth that was never expected – we are reminded why we began. We are the Smiling Dandelion Foundation. And we are here not to bloom loudly, but to grow meaningfully. Everywhere.

With warmth,
The Smiling Dandelion Team