Every Little Bit Helps - Donate to children suffering from cleft lips and cleft palates - Operation Smiles
November 17, 2014
Operation Smile is an international children's medical charity that performs safe, effective cleft lip and cleft palate surgery, and delivers postoperative and ongoing medical therapies to children in low and middle income countries.
At Operation Smile, we're more than a charity. We're a mobilized force of international medical professionals and caring hearts. Operation Smile is a pioneer in advocating for the importance of safe surgery in resource poor environments and is the largest surgical charity of its kind, leading research into the causes of cleft lip and cleft palate, and its prevention, treatment and eradication.
Every three minutes a child is born with a cleft. A child with a cleft has twice the odds of dying before their first birthday. Children with cleft conditions who survive may have difficulty eating, speaking, hearing or breathing properly. In some places, they are shunned and rejected. And in too many cases, their parents can't afford the surgeries they need to live a productive life.
Every child deserves access to safe, quality surgical care. Every child deserves a future filled with hope.
That's where we come in as the largest volunteer-based children's medical charity providing free cleft surgeries. Since 1982, Operation Smile — through the help of dedicated medical volunteers — has provided 220,000 free surgical procedures for children and young adults. Our work creates a lasting global impact. We train local medical professionals in developing countries and strengthen healthcare systems so more children in some of the poorest areas in the world can be treated.
As one of the most prominent charities for children in the world, we work in over 60 countries to heal children’s smiles and bring hope for a better future. Together, we are saving children’s lives.
Thanks to the generosity and spirit of volunteerism shown by our supporters, we heal thousands of children per year. With your help, how many lives can we change tomorrow? Learn more about our mission, key differentiators and history by clicking on the links below to see how we are unique from other children's charities.
Operation Smile mobilizes its network of more than 5,400 medical volunteers from more than 80 countries who donate their time and talents to provide safe, effective cleft lip and cleft palate surgery, and deliver postoperative and ongoing medical therapies to children in low and middle income countries. Since 1982, Operation Smile has provided more than 220,00 free surgical procedures for children and young adults.
Our volunteer-based teams of international medical professionals repair cleft deformities, but equally important, they restore hope and renew lives by improving the physical, mental and social well-being of each child.
In addition to short-term mission work, Operation Smile provides long-term, sustainable medical care through the establishment of year-round treatment centers. Through the implementation of educational programs and medical training, as well as contributing medical equipment and supplies, Operation Smile grows medical self-sufficiency in resource poor environments.
Together, our staff and volunteer medical teams repair clefts, advocate for patients, lead research into the cause, prevention and treatment of cleft conditions, and ultimately aim to eradicate cleft defects globally. This is made possible by the generous support of our donors, international partners and other non-medical volunteers.
Operation Smile has gained extensive knowledge and insight into the challenges facing global health in the developing world. Poverty, malnutrition, cultural superstitions, and a severe lack of specialized surgeons in many resource-poor environments are all part of the problem.
Giving every child the chance to smile
Every child deserves the ability to smile and a chance to thrive. But in many parts of the world, children with cleft lip and cleft palate are hidden away, too embarrassed to attend school and face uncertain futures because their parents cannot afford to provide the surgery they need.
At Operation Smile we believe that all children deserve to live their lives with dignity. Every child deserves to be able to smile and a chance to thrive. And for those suffering from cleft lip, cleft palate or other facial deformities, dignity begins with a smile. But in many parts of the world, children with cleft lip and cleft palate are hidden away, to embarrassed to attend school and face uncertain futures because their parents cannot afford to provide the surgery they need.
Our medical volunteers, including surgeons, anesthesiologists, pediatricians, intensivists, nurses, speech therapists, nutritionists, dentists, child life specialists and so many more, make change possible.
Our free, life-changing surgeries take as little as 45 minutes, and can give a boy or a girl with a facial deformity a lifetime of smiles. Plus, every child we heal creates a ripple effect on the child's family, community and country. Imagine an older child whose cleft palate is fixed but who is still unable to speak, or a child who has never before seen a pediatrician or dentist before they encounter Operation Smile. Our medical teams give our patients specialized care so they can live healthy and productive lives.
Building Sustainability
While Operation Smile donates medical equipment, supplies and provides year-round medical treatment through international medical missions, worldwide Operation Smile has established Foundations and Care Centers that work on the ground to move countries toward self-sufficiency. Our in-country teams do this by fostering volunteerism, securing local funds and coordinating their own surgical missions, resulting in cost-effecient and sustainable local medical missions.
Medical Education and Training
While many low and middle income countries have the greatest burden of surgical disease, they also have the fewest medical professionals trained in specialized practice areas. Through partnerships, Operation Smile has developed in-depth, hands-on medical education programs and trained thousands of local healthcare professionals in low and middle income countries.
Surgeries performed in-country by local volunteers during medical missions, or at care centers, account for 67 percent of the procedures being performed by Operation Smile, allowing us to work towards creating universal access to safe surgery and to reach even more children.
We hope you'll join us with your support.
Operation Smile mobilizes a world of generous hearts to heal children's smiles and transform lives across the globe.
We believe that all children deserve to live their lives with dignity. And for those suffering from cleft lip, cleft palate or other facial deformities, dignity begins with a smile.
Driven by our universal compassion for children, we work worldwide to repair childhood facial deformities by delivering safe, effective surgery and related medical care directly to patients. The global partnerships we create, the knowledge we share and the infrastructure we build leave a legacy that lives well beyond our medical missions, making a lasting difference in our world.
Our impact is felt not just through the children we heal, but through the daily transformation of donors, volunteers and staff as we fulfill our shared vision and see immediate, life-changing results.
Operation Smile is distinguished by excellence. We work around the world, in some of the most remote places, to ensure all children born with cleft conditions have the opportunity to be healed. We apply our Global Standards of Care to all of our procedures and post-operative care to ensure that our patients and their families receive the highest level of care, cleanliness, respect and dignity.
These standards are leading the world into a new frontier of safe, effective surgical care that is available anywhere it is needed.
Six ways you know it's Operation Smile
We reach the unreachable
Our medical programs mobilize medical professionals from all over the world to treat children with facial deformities. We bring together the latest, most effective practices and training to deliver safe surgery to remote places where it is not available, often in low and middle income countries. The impact of our work is lasting. We leave behind a legacy of trained medical staff, surgical equipment and professional partnerships that work year-round to ensure more children are healed and more lives are changed. Our teams have provided care in more than 60 countries around the world.
We work from the heart
Operation Smile surgeries are conducted by our credentialed medical volunteer base of thousands of surgeons, anesthesiologists, dentists, nurses and other professionals. These dedicated individuals donate their time and talent throughout the world. Our volunteers are the drive, the spirit and the reason we've been able to provide over 220,000 free surgeries at no cost to our patients and their families.
We apply Global Standards of Care
We bring the highest quality of care to every child, every time. We were the first cleft organization supporting the World Health Organization's "Safe Surgery Saves Lives" initiative. Our Global Standards of Care is our commitment to ensuring that every patient cared for by Operation Smile will benefit from the same sophisticated equipment, procedures and highly-trained, credentialed medical professionals, no matter where they receive treatment.
We build self-sufficiency worldwide
The global demand for cleft repair surgery is staggering and can only be met if we help countries move toward self-reliance and build sustainable solutions. Education, training, medical equipment, best surgical practices and an expanding network of year-round care centers are some of our highest priorities. We work in over 60 countries, and 67 percent of our surgeries are performed by in-country, local medical volunteers during medical missions or at care centers — allowing us to deliver essential high-quality care to more and more children each year.
We lead the way
Raising awareness and advocating for increased access to safe surgical care to reduce the incidence of clefts are major initiatives. Our network of global Foundations, as well as our research and advocacy efforts in the world health community are helping us to make significant strides in these initiatives. Through our student leadership programs, we're also leading the way for students to learn more about childhood facial deformities and understand how they are empowered to make a difference in their community and the world. By engaging students from kindergarten all the way to college, we aim to build future leaders and humanitarians who will help us heal more smiles in the future.
We continually educate and train
Providing medical education and training is one of the cornerstones of who we are. One in seven children worldwide have no access to health services. To alleviate this inequity, we are steadfast in our commitment to train local surgeons, anesthesiologists, and other essential medical professionals in resource-poor environments so they are empowered to treat their own communities, with their own resources, their own volunteers and their own supplies. Operation Smile offers educational exchange programs to medical professionals through partnerships with leading academic institutions and through the American Heart Association international life-support program. By collaborating with volunteers, business leaders, universities and governments, we are reaching our goal to create an expanding network of highly-trained local medical volunteers that will provide the best care possible to the children we help.
we donate to Operation Smile with each textbook
It's back to Operation Smile for us in 2013 and 2014. Through June 2014, CampusBookRentals has made a minimum commitment to contribute 80 more surgeries, but that's just a minimum! We hope to contribute much more. Specifically, we're contributing to Operation Smile in two ways: First, we’ve made the minimum commitment as mentioned above. And second, through RentBack, we provide students the opportunity to direct any portion of their earnings to Operation Smile directly from their RentBack account. RentBack is a powerful program that puts money into student's pockets. We've now provided the tools to allow students to contribute directly through this powerful program.
Please join us in making a difference, and best of luck with your classes this semester.
For our Making a Difference project 2009, we took a suggestion from one of our customers to give assistance to a summer kids program at an underprivileged elementary school. Following our customer's lead, we contacted Washington Elementary in downtown Salt Lake City, UT and learned they needed various supplies to make the program a success. It's a great cause that keeps kids off the streets and busy with worthwhile activities, projects, and games while they're on summer break. We broke from the office for the better part of a day to fill up shopping carts at Walmart and Target. It was a crazy spectrum of supplies from paint, clay, glitter and glue, to soccer balls, dodge balls, Frisbees and jump ropes. It was fun to be hands on and get these supplies delivered to the summer program. We're looking forward to 2010. Please feel free to send your suggestions to info@campusbookrentals.com. We are headquartered in Ogden, UT, but that doesn't limit our ability to take our Making a Difference program to other regions. If you can think if a worthwhile project, we'll consider it, I promise.
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