Save Smile Train

It's no surprise that we have a soft place in our hearts for children with cleft lips and palates.

Rachel's lip was fixed at 5 months of age. We in the United States are very blessed to have the health care we have, despite the threats of changes that might someday come.

Children living outside the United States aren't so fortunate. Some children with cleft lips don't have their lip repaired until their well out of of their toddler stage, some even as old as ten years old, sometimes older.

There are two organizations that go into these countries and help provide the surgeries to restore smiles to these children. Operation Smile and the Smile Train are both known for their efforts in this area. And while they both focus on the same sort of problem, their approach is very much different. It wasn't until Rachel's Speech Therapist came into our life last May that we really learned the difference between the two.

Operation Smile takes medical teams into the areas for a few weeks at a time and provides the surgeries for these children, when their time is up, they leave.

Smile Train goes in and teaches the existing doctors in the country to perform the surgeries themselves, thus being able to ultimately treat many more children within their country.

Currently, there is an attempt to merge the two organizations. There is a petition circulating for people to sign, to bring to the attention of the New York Attorney General to stop this merge.

The petition is to save Smile Train and it's way of practice.

The greater the numbers on the petition, the better, so if you would, would you please follow this link and sign the petition.

Your support would be very much appreciated!

Save Smile Train - The Petition