Program’s Mission and Values

Operation Smile’s mission is to mobilize a world of generous hearts to rally around one goal: to provide free, effective surgeries to repair childhood deformities by repairing children's lives across the globe.

Inputs

Money is a vital part of this program, enabling it to run effectively

Program runs on a staff of medical professionals consisting of surgeons, anesthesiologists, nurses, dentists, pediatricians, and other medical professionals.

Inputs Continued…

Medical Equipment, Medication, and Supplies

Care CentersVolunteers,

Translators, Coordinators

Planes to fly medical staff into remote sites

Outputs

Operation Smile has been working since 1982 with it’s dedicated staff and volunteers to provide help for children and young adults with cleft lips, palates, and other facial deformities. The qualitative data of

the program shows that Operation Smile has provided more than 2 million patient evaluations and over 200,000 free surgeries

Outputs Continued…

The program completes several missions traveling with it’s crew to grant a child the opportunity to be normal. On a typical international

excursion, 300-500 children receive full medical evaluations and 100-150 children are surgically treated. They also seize the opportunity to train the medical professionals of the area and allot information to the people on the deformities.

Local missions take care of more than 60% of the children treated.

Process

Operation Smile works to solve a problem by going on missions to deal with the cleft lip and palate situation.

Missions involve a team of roughly 60 credentialed medical professionals including surgeons, nurses, pediatricians, dentists, and others from across the globe to travel internationally and treat children. Teams have to be courageous and confident in themselves and their work when on missions in order to provide the effective care the program is known for.

The typical mission is in the span of a two week period conducted and executed by a team made up of: both in and out of country volunteers, the medical professionals, interpreters, coordinators, and a pair of high school students.

Process Continued…

Not only is the team supposed to be shipped around, but the missions have to have to arrange for the medical equipment, medication, and supplies required to carry out the service requiring them to think ahead and anticipate future difficulties.

Over the two week period the program carries out efficient screening and surgeries to treat hundreds of children.

Outcomes

Safe secure development where children can normal life styles

Speech is improved because clefts and palates no longer hinder communication

Health increases because eating and drinking is now possible for children who struggled with eating because of their deformities.

Higher self–esteem in the children because they are spared the shame, bullying, taunts, and rejection of their deformities.

Community Need

Clefts are a facial deformity seen across the globe, every race susceptible to it, therefore this is a global problem. More than 200,000 children are born each year with a cleft lip or

a cleft palate (1 in every 500) which can threaten both their life or the livelihood of the child. One of ten of these children will not survive due to livelihood difficulties.

Although the cause is still not identified research and statistics show that Native American and Asians have the highest rates, but everyone still has a chance to have this deformity befall on them. Statistics show that the likelihood of having a cleft lip or palate

out of a thousand depending on race is about 3 Native Americans, 3 Japanese, 3 Chinese, 1 Caucasian, 1 Latin American, and 1 African. Japanese: 0.82/1000 to 3.36/1000.

From http://operationsmile.org//

Community Need

Operation Smile works to provide these children with free life-changing surgeries alleviating both their pain and their parents’ as well as providing them with a normal life free of hiding and discrimination.

Shuttleworth Foundation believes…

Operation Smileaddresses this by…

1. Believes in the idea that it is people who change the world for the better.

Operation Smile strives to change the lives of children with deformities and maximize our chances for desirable outcomes so that they can benefit from having a normal life. Through generosity and the help of the volunteers the program is able to heal thousands of children every year, changing life and ultimately making the world a better place.

Shuttleworth Foundation

Shuttleworth Foundation believes…

Operation Smile addresses this by…

2. If we are rigorously open about ideas and practices, more people will copy them and make the world a better place in a shorter period of time.

3. Global outreach

Operation Smile strives to reach greater amounts of people by promoting awareness and open-mindedness and changing people’s dispositions and improving thinking towards cleft lip and palate deformities. This activism inspires others to become involved and adopt their methods and practices in other countries which can be illustrated in the international extension of the program and how they take the time to train medical professionals once they are in other countries.

Shuttleworth Foundation

Personal Connection

My personal connection to the organization would be that I’ve always felt strongly about helping others who are less fortunate and working for a better world. I went on an Air Walk to promote healthy environments and clean air once and I feel this organization is related to this because it’s helping children fit in and feel a part of society by providing them with life changing surgeries.

Get Involved

Donate money to the cause. As little as $280 can fund a child’s cleft surgery.

Take informed action and volunteer your timeShare the cause, help raise awareness and

aggrandize the program.