Help Transform a Child’s Life With the Gift of a Smile

Every 3 minutes, a child is born with a cleft (A cleft is an opening in the lip, the roof of the mouth or the soft tissue in the back of the mouth). One in 10 of those children will die before their first birthday. Those that survive face a life of shame, often times they are unable to speak, eat or smile. Some of them are rejected by their family and community, this is because their family can’t afford the surgeries they need to live a productive live.

With help from Operation Smiles and their dedicated medical volunteers, to date they’ve performed more than 3.5 million comprehensive patient evaluations and over 200,000 free surgeries for children and young adults born with facial deformities. These free, life-changing surgeries take as little as 45 minutes, and can give a child with facial deformity a lifetime of smiles. Plus, every child they heal creates a ripple effect on the child’s family, community and country.

If you’re interested in helping monetarily then check out Operation Smile Holiday Giving Catalog for unique ways to help give smiles to children.

How can you support Operation Smile beyond just donating money?

You can help change a child’s life by sharing your time, talent and resources as a medical or local community volunteer. Operation Smile need your help to share their cause, complete smile service projects and raise funds — so that children across the globe can receive free, life-changing surgery from their medical volunteers. Here are a few ways you can become involved:

• Become a medical volunteer
• Share Operation Smile with friends, family and colleagues by hosting a fundraising and awareness event in your local community
• Host an Operation Smile speaker who can share their stories of lives changed through Operation Smile
• Raise funds and awareness with a Workplace Giving Campaign
• Collect items to fill Smile Bags, provide medical office supplies or Child Life Therapy interactive toys.
• Sew children’s hospital gowns, blankets, and armbands (gown patterns provided for a small fee)

This post is made possible by the generous folks over at CampusBookRentals. For every book rented on CampusBookRentals.com, a donation is made to Operation Smiles. CampusBookRentals.com has a new program called RentBack

RentBack is a new initiative that allows students to rent the textbooks they own – to other students, by doing this student stand to make 2-4x more money compared to what they’d make through buyback options!

Curious how it works? Check out the video below for an in-dept explanation