Provide Dental Care for 60,000 Bolivian Children!

Our Combined Dental Care Team Goes to Highlands town of Marquina in May!

Dear Supporters,

We are in a wonderful stage in the development of the Silver Diamine Fluride (SDF) application program and the subsequent application of Glass ionomer Cement (GIC) fillings, in the community of Marquina, Municipality of Quillacollo in Cochabamba, Bolivia.

1500 Children in highlands town of Marquina will be helped!

    In previous days, the coordination meeting was held with the members of the Board of directors of parents, educational authorities of the Marquina educational unit and the San Rafael Refuge organization (an organization also affiliated with GlobalGiving) to carry out in the month of May 2023.  The implementation of this program will bring benefits to more than 250 children with ages ranging from 3 to 8 years, this being the pilot stage which with your continuous support we will be able to reach the more than 1500 children who are part of this educational unit.

Tri-lingual Registration Document includes native Quechua

    The expectations on the part of the local population are high and the participation of Smiles Forever, the community, authorities, partner organizations and all those who make up this dream is paying off. Likewise, a display of multi-culturalism is being carried out since the registration documentation of the process will include the languages English, Spanish and the native Quechua of the area, since the factor that many of the parents originating from the area only speak the native language is taken into account. 

Women’s Health Center Added to our free dental clinic clients

Regarding the daily work in our Smiles Forever dental clinic, we have begun to provide free services to a new organization, the Women's Help Center, which is dedicated to providing help to pregnant women who have been abandoned and in a bad financial – emotional situation and therefore a complex situation regarding their oral health. This center will take care of the transfer and transportation of its beneficiaries to our clinic because its work not only covers urban areas, but also rural areas of Cochabamba.

Once again, thanks all of you who give us your support, and thus are an important part of Smiles Forever.  It is through your participation that we can provide a better future not only for the present, but also for new generations.

GlobalGiving's Little by Little Campaign adds 50% to your donations up to $50 until Midnight Washington, D.C. time Friday April 7th.  Not only may you donate through our link, but you may also give directly to Refugio Rafael.  You'll see Connie de Jong, their founder in our pictures.  Soon Smiles Forever Founder Sandy Kemper will again be here in Bolivia and traveling to Marquina.  So much is being done in our joint effort!

FAITH, HOPE, DENTAL CARE & MERRY CHRISTMAS

Dear Friends, Supporters, Donors and everyone who identifies with our labor of love for the unprotected, needy and at great risk children.

New Shelters Centro Nuevo, Centro Boliviano Esperanza, and Kausay Muku (A New Life in Quechua)

This year was full of challenges and difficulties in our daily work, but we face them with every intention of overcoming any obstacle that comes our way. New shelters have already become part of the family of Smiles Forever beneficiaries increasing our total work load in 27% compared to 2021. Centro Contigo Nuevo is a shelter focused on supporting children at risk and abandonment by providing educational support, nutrition and counseling to families that are at the edge of rupture. Centro Boliviano Esperanza is an organization that works with children whose parents are incarcerated and has as objective their allocation with foster families. Kausay Muku (native Quechua words for A NEW LIFE) is an organization that works in the more impoverished neighborhoods and slums of Cochabamba providing education support, prevention and awareness related to abandonment and abuse.

During the month of November 2022, Smiles Forever Foundation had an active participation role in scientific programs related to the use of Silver Diamine Fluoride (SDF) with the involvement of local and international academics, dental care Providers (Dentists & Dental Hygienist’s) and other allied and partner organizations. This study is projected to demonstrate a more scientific approach to a new way of performing dentistry and its corresponding international publication of results.

Exciting New Year ahead helping the Rural Community of Marquina

For the Smiles Forever Foundation, 2023 represents new challenges and new projects that have been conceived and projected for this year, including the Silver diamine Fluride (SDF) application program in the rural community of Marquina in Cochabamba, Bolivia, with a projection of more than 700 beneficiaries in an initial stage, as well as the inclusion of new shelters, centers and homes in our community dental clinic program, projecting a 30% increase in the capacity of patients treated in our facilities. For these new programs and the continuity of our current  projects and programs, we count on your support and donations that are crucial and it will allow us to provide dental care and prevention for so many children in need the opportunity to receive free quality dental treatments, allowing them to dream with a better future free of pain, infections and dental disease.

In this time of peace, love and harmony, this is my person and all the members of the Smiles Forever Foundation team who want to thank you and wish you happy holidays, a prosperous year 2023 and may your hearts be full of happiness and blessings.

Sincerely, Alejandro, Sandy and our wonderful team

Smiles Forever will bring dental care to 650 highlands children through an exciting partnership between two valued GlobalGiving organizations:  Smiles Forever and Refuge Rafael. An inter-institutional agreement was signed which will not only promote dental health with education and screenings and dentistry care, but will also launch a long-term research study using SDF.  SDF is a silver diamide fluoride treatment which can arrest decay.

The scope of our work:

It is very pleasing for the Smiles Forever Foundation to announce our work and collaboration in favor of the San Rafael Refuge (located in the outskirts of Cochabamba – Bolivia), which is also a beneficiary of the GlobalGiving platform, a means by which we were able to initiate contact with this organization and later sign an inter-institutional agreement that allows us to work in pursuit of the oral health of the beneficiaries of a program as positive as the San Rafael Refuge.

The signing of this agreement also led to better and larger projects, since together with the San Rafael Refuge, work is being done on the development of a pilot program for the application of Fluor Diamino de Plata (SDF) that will benefit 320 children.   Our initial collaboration began by assessing the acute needs at our Cochabamba clinic.  Several children were screened and helped here in Cochabamba which is under a two hour commute from the refuge. 

Recently, our founder Sandy Kemper visited from the United States and she was greeted with a special dance performance.  The final objective is to be able to provide dental services to the more than 650 children of the Marquina elementary school, an elementary school in the area where the San Rafael refuge is located, as well as the establishment and refurbishment of a pre-existing dental unit that is currently abandoned due to lack of resources, supplies and professionals in the field who can provide the service that is non-existent in the area at the moment.  Added to this is the very poor dental situation of the children who attend this school, a situation that was determined through an on-site evaluation visit for sampling.

We also want to thank all the members that make up the community of donors as well as all those who make up GlobalGiving since their work and support allows us to be able to help other programs that make up this wonderful community and the donors whose donations have a direct impact on the life and development of the beneficiaries of both organizations.

Smiles Forever is answering Refugio Rafael's urgent plea for dental services, and your generous donations can help!

Traditionally, miners and migrant indigenous peoples of Bolivia's highlands, have been either forgotten or overlooked when it comes to receiving dental care. Often uprooted families are lacking shelter, a school, and even food.  Sometimes the mother is left alone with her children.  A wonderful organization, Refugio Rafael, also vetted by GlobalGiving, is closing the gap for these hill people.  They can live in a safe community, grow some of their own food, and the children can attend school.

These social services are returning as the grip the Covid pandemic has had on Bolivia lessens.  Smiles Forever is located in Cochabamba, a city in a fertile valley within a couple of hours of Refugio Rafael.

This is a special report from Smiles Forever to you and other supporters on behalf of their Provide Dental Care for 44,000 Bolivian Children! project on GlobalGiving.

The Smiles Forever dental clinic in Cochabamba, Bolivia is answering the plea to bring preventative and urgent dental care to children served by Refugio Rafael.  Andean Highlands families, some with only a  mother, have come to the shelter located approximately an hour and a half from our clinic.  Currently, our two GlobalGiving groups are beginning a dental evaluation for elementary and older youth.

Already children are being identified for SDF treatments, which is a way to stop the spread of cavities.  Other older children have been found to need specialist dental care for root canals or crowns.

This is an ideal new partnership because of the proximity, and it is really wonderful that both Smiles Forever and Refugio Rafael  have strong leadership and stable finances to give this promise of longterm success.

Thank you for helping.  Your gifts inspire us to expand dental care, in areas totally lacking in this critical aspect of overall health treatments.

Links:

• https://goto.gg/38170