Behind Every Smile

A Visual Record of Care, Support and Human Stories

Some stories of social change are best understood not through statistics, but through the lives behind them.

Behind Every Smile is a coffee-table book created by the Kerala Social Security Mission (KSSM) to document the experiences of people who benefited from its “We Care” initiative, a Kerala Government programme aimed at strengthening the social protection system.

The 96-page publication brings together a cross-section of beneficiaries and their experiences, recording the circumstances they faced and the support that helped them move forward. The book looks beyond welfare measures as programmes and presents them through the people whose lives they touched.

The project was extended through a series of videos, giving those featured an opportunity to speak about their own journeys. Their accounts reflect the emotional, physical and social challenges they encountered, and the role of timely support in transforming their lives.

Released by then Kerala Health Minister K. K. Shailaja, the publication serves as a human-centred record of the “We Care” initiative.

For The Language Mill, Behind Every Smile represents an approach to communication where documentation becomes storytelling — bringing together people, experience, photography, words and design to create a record that can be understood not merely as a government initiative, but through the human lives behind it.