Operationsmile.org

All of us have the right to be happy, spreading this with a simple smile. However, not everybody, unfortunately, can enjoy it this way.

Operation Smile was founded in 1982, in Virginia, by Dr. William P. Magee, a plastic surgeon, and his wife, Kathleen, a nurse and clinical social worker. With the purpose of helping children that suffer with cleft lips and cleft palates, the Magees traveled to the Philippines with a group of medical volunteers. During this journey, they discovered hundreds of children ravaged by deformities and helped many of them. From then on, the Magees saw the need and Operation Smile was born.

Coordinating more than 30 medical missions in 25 countries annually, in 2006, medical volunteers provided free surgeries for 9,334 children. Operation Smile’s partner countries include: Bolivia, Brazil, Cambodia, China, Colombia, Ecuador, Egypt, Ethiopia, Gaza Strip, Honduras, India, Jordan, Kenya, Mexico, Morocco, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Russia, Thailand, Venezuela and Vietnam.

Operation Smile will commemorate its 25^th Anniversary of success and charity in November of this year, with 43 simultaneous missions in 25 countries, with a goal of providing better lives and of course, new smiles to an estimated 5,000 children living with facial deformities. In total, during all of these years, more than 100,000 have been treated already.

Every one can make a difference. These are the types of organizations, with people that have good character and the will to alleviate a little of human suffering, that provide a chance of society surviving, in the presence of such a cruel and unfair world lately.

- Anna Luíza Andrade