As part of the Moodie Davitt Virtual Travel Retail Expo’s support for cleft charity Smile Train, we are running a regular series that highlights the organisation’s life-changing work.
As reported, The Moodie Davitt Report is to fund a cleft operation through Smile Train for every paid exhibitor at the pioneering event.
Smile Train has supported over 1.5 million cleft surgeries since 1999. Every five minutes Smile Train-supported cleft treatment helps a child in need. Some 200,000 babies are born every year with cleft lips and/or palates. US$250 funds the cost of the 45-minute cleft surgery that transforms the life of a child – and that of his or her family. |
Let us introduce you to Sel, Maxime and Divine, three children whose lives have been changed by Smile Train.
Sel is a much-loved youngster from Cambodia. His mother, Soan, had always felt sorry for any children she saw with untreated clefts. The condition was something of a mystery to her; she knew, however, that the children would be discriminated against their whole lives, and possibly even barred from entering school.
When she and her husband, Mao, had a son with a cleft lip and palate, they were sad but not heart-broken. Their family and community were supportive but Sel struggled to eat; he cried constantly with hunger and was in danger of dying.
When Sel was one year old, Soan and Mao took him to Phnom Penh after hearing that a mission-based organisation would be flying into the city to perform cleft surgeries for free.
Along with many other families, they waited for three days, only to watch the mission fly off back to the US while Sel screamed from hunger.
In that moment of pain there was, however, a spark of hope. While packing up to go home, the family heard about a hospital in nearby Takmao, where free cleft surgeries were performed every day thanks to Smile Train and its model of empowering local healthcare workers in their own hospitals.
Soon after, Sel received a Smile Train-sponsored surgery to heal his cleft lip. A year later, he received a second free surgery to heal his cleft palate.
Fast-forward ten years, and Sel is an adventurous boy who excels at school, especially in literature and maths. He loves playing tennis and liang cheung muy, a traditional Cambodian hopping game, with his friends.
Although he doesn’t remember life with an untreated cleft, his parents have made sure he recognises his baby pictures in the hope that when he passes a child with a cleft, he won’t show them pity – he’ll introduce them to Smile Train.
Maxime is from Cameroon. His mother, Joseline, first saw a cleft when she saw her son for the first time.
Her joy at having a baby boy turned to confusion and anxiety which increased when she realised that her husband – let’s call him Paul – did not want anything to do with his son.
Joseline’s parents discovered that the Mbingo Baptist Hospital, in their region of Cameroon, could provide cleft lip surgery when Maxime was six months old.
She remained concerned that she would never see her baby smile. But, when Maxime came out of the operating room with his cleft lip healed by Smile Train partner Dr. Acha Tikum, the dark cloud that had hung over the family since Maxime’s birth lifted.
“I’ll always treasure the moment I smiled with my baby for the first time,” Joseline said. Paul drove overnight to see his son; when he held Maxime this time, the pain on his face disappeared.
Joseline believes the experience taught her husband an important lesson, that he needed to support his wife and their family in difficult situations. However, it would take a few more years before she would know for sure whether the lesson really had sunk in.
During her third pregnancy, Joseline learned that the child would also have a cleft. Haunted by the hurtful things neighbours had said after Maxime was born, and the memory of Paul not wanting his son, she worried about telling her husband the news. He shrugged it off and embraced her.
When Divine was born both parents were there for her and, once again, it was Dr. Tikum who performed the life-changing Smile Train-sponsored cleft surgery just a few months later.
[Make the investment of a lifetime. Just US$21/month is all it takes to sponsor life-changing cleft surgery for one more child every year. Visit smiletrain.org to make a gift today.]
