By Michele Sinesky | Special Project Coordinator
Celebrating our 10 year anniversary, Smile Train will help more than 500,000 children all over the world receive free, life changing cleft surgery. Over this same decade Smile Train has helped more than 100,000 children in India, giving them a new smile and a second chance at life. Completing 40,000 more surgeries this year than last year, Smile Train partners with 184 local hospitals. The goal for 2009 is to help 50,000 poor children in India and create 160 new partner hospitals.
In a real-world fairy tale, and for one special moment at the 2009 Academy Awards, amidst hundreds of A-list stars, all eyes were on Pinki, the 8-year-old subject of the documentary SMILE PINKI, as her film won the Oscar for best documentary short. The captivating story of a desperately poor little girl in rural India whose life is magically transformed when she receives free surgery to correct her cleft lip highlights the work of American charity Smile Train, a charity devoted to providing free cleft palate/cleft lip surgery to children in 76 developing countries around the world. The free surgery and related treatment that The Smile Train sponsors are performed by local medical teams in local hospitals in developing countries. This “teach a man to fish” strategy builds in-country capacity while helping very poor but very proud communities become self-sufficient, one smile at a time. For more on Smile Train and the best documentary short Smile Pinki, visit: www.smiletrain.org <http://www.smiletrain.org>
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