35 Smiles in 35 Days - Here's how you can help Operation Smile SA

Operation Smile #35MilesIn35Days

Operation Smile is doing wonderful life affirming work! I love to hear about children getting their smiles! Ever since a friend got involved with Smiles for Kinshasha, I have been applauding the work that they do!

The new campaign #35SmilesIn35Days is in support of those suffering from cleft lip and palate conditions. It has also been created in support of the global campaign Until We Heal and celebration of Operation Smile 35th year.

See the campaign #35SmilesIn35Days video 

Sasol and Smile Foundation blankets' drive for children #Blankets4Coffee

Smile Foundation

I love and support the work that the Smile Foundation is doing by giving children back their smiles. Sasol has partnered with the Smile Foundation in a blanket drive for these children.

Sasol is calling on members of the public to donate blankets to its nationwide blanket drive with a customer reward of free coffee. 

The blanket contributions will be distributed to children undergoing facial surgeries as part of the Smile Foundation’s national surgical programme.

Sasol

“Corrective facial reconstructive surgery offers new hope for these children and their families. But it’s imperative the children receive the right care before and after their operations. In winter, that means staying warm while they make the often very long and difficult journey to the hospital, and keeping opportunistic infections at bay while they’re in recovery and return home after their surgeries. This blanket drive helps us address both those very important issues,” explains Hedley Lewis, Executive Director, Smile Foundation. 

Lewis adds that the Smile Foundation would be grateful for any blankets the public could spare, including new blankets. “Due to our multi-disciplinary approach to these paediatric surgeries, we support the children right through their recovery. As part of this, we take into consideration the opportunity for infections, and will be supplying the Smile patients with any new blankets that are donated,” he says.

What you can do! Blankets can be dropped off at all Sasol Delight stores in South Africa until 6 July 2016.


Share and encourage your friends and followers on Twitter with @SasolSA and #Blankets4Coffee.

Making smiles in Madagascar

Operation Smile. Madagascar Mission 2011. from Zute Lightfoot on Vimeo.
(Go to this link if it does not want to play: Operation Smile Madagascar Mission)

A friend of mine does volunteer work every year for Operation Smile. She helps with the filing of each and every case of a child that gets a smile being made during such a mission.
(See last year's guest post by her: Smiles for Kinshasha, by Karin D'Orville.)

It must be one of the most gratifying ways of doing volunteer work. Smiles are being "made" - children's faces and lives are changed in the time span of a day.
I can only imagine that it changes the whole family's lives who "suffers" with the child as well.

Karin notified me of the slideshow above which is about this year's  Mission to Madagascar. It gives a very insightful look into the way the missions operates and how it changes the lives of the children.

"Operation Smile provides free surgery to repair cleft lip, cleft palate and other facial deformities for children around the globe. Operation Smile was in Madagascar for 10 days, the team was made up of 70 medical professionals from around the world all of whom had volunteered their time."

I cringed when they showed the people that gets turned away...
To wait for another year for a change to be able to have that most important operation!
That must be so frustrating!


I think Operation Smile is doing a wonderful job!

Thanks to all the volunteers and monetary contributors!

SMILES FOR KINSHASA, by Karin d’Orville

Operation Smile in DRC - 21 to 30 May 2010

I asked my friend Karin d’Orville to write an account of her volunteer work for Operation Smile in the Congo. Operation Smile changes smiles and lives for the people they help. As a mother I can just imagine how heart-wrenching and difficult it must be to have a baby with a cleft lip, cleft palate or other facial deformities.

The long wait

Karin: "French and Lingala are foreign to me. I don’t understand a word. But the emotions on the sea of faces under the canopy are universal: hope, anxiety – and fear. Fear of having hopes dashed. Fear of the unknown. Any medical procedure is a daunting prospect. But the prospect of being selected for an operation that could make you fit in instead of being an outcast – that’s a valid apprehension.

Kinshasa is a sprawling city of some 9 million residents. The lawn of the Clinique Ngaliema is jam-packed. Parents of babies as young as 4 days and grown men of 84 years old – they all hope to get the thumbs-up for facial surgery. Their fates lie in the hands of a group of some 60 foreigners, assembled from 8 countries, including South Africa, Namibia, the USA and Belgium.

Screening

Like every member of the group, I’ve volunteered to be here. It was as a journalist in November 2008, that I got first hand knowledge of Operation Smile, an international NGO that changes the lives of mainly children with cleft lips and palates. When I recently had to decide what to do with my weeks of accumulated leave, I thought back to my Madagascan experience with Operation Smile – and that not all their volunteers are medical professionals. It wasn’t a difficult decision to offer my services for a mission in the DRC.

Queueing for surgery

Medical records are probably the most “un-medical” job during an Op Smile mission. After a few days of writing and filing, my back ached, ink levels were low and my hand cramped. But it brought me up close and personal with every patient who so desperately needed life-changing intervention. And when my spirits were on the low side, a team member would so magically appear and offer a back rub or cold drink in the sweltering Kinshasa heat.

Queuing for surgery

Of the 377 patients the team screened, 155 were operated on. I needed no translator to understand the warm handshake from a grateful parent – the shy and painful but oh so perfect smile of a young patient taken to post-op in a wheelchair.

Queuing for surgery

Operation Smile turns no patients away. Those who did not receive surgeries in May, have been asked to return – when Operation Smile visits Kinshasa again. Will I be back? Yes, cramping hands and all. Individuals are so often powerless to affect change – but my experience in Kinshasa has taught me the power of the collective – and has made me so grateful for what is my perfect imperfect life in South Africa."

 Karin d'Orville