As many of you know, Operation Smile has a special place in my heart…
My daughter Emma was born with a Cleft Lip and Palate. When we first learned of her cleft we thought once she was born she would have surgery and everything would be normal. We were highly mistaken, when Emma was first born she had feeding problems and was in the NICU for 50 days. During this time we learned that this journey would be a lot longer and harder than expected. As you can see on the picture above Emma has come a long way since birth, but we still have a long way to go. Currently we are working Emma’s speech. She attends therapy and we work with her at home. She will be 3 next month and so far she has had 5 surgeries (4 directly cleft related, and 1 for a g-tube to help with feeding). Fortunately for Emma mostly everything was covered under our insurance, state insurance program, and the rest we were able to cover out of pocket.
However, all cleft children aren’t as fortunate.
This is where Operation Smile steps in…
“Every three minutes a child is born with a cleft. A child with a cleft has twice the odds of dying before their first birthday. Children with cleft conditions who survive may have difficulty eating, speaking, hearing or breathing properly. In some places, they are shunned and rejected. And in too many cases, their parents can’t afford the surgeries they need to live a productive life.”
Operation Smile is an international children’s medical charity that performs safe, effective cleft lip and cleft palate surgery, and delivers postoperative and ongoing medical therapies to children in low and middle income countries.
Operation Smile is consists of international medical professionals and caring hearts. Operation Smile is a pioneer in advocating for the importance of safe surgery in resource poor environments and is the largest surgical charity of its kind, leading research into the causes of cleft lip and cleft palate, and its prevention, treatment and eradication.
And as with any charity, a majority of their funding comes from fundraisers, and donations. Operation Smile, Campus Book Rentals and Rent Back have all partnered together.
When students rent books from CampusBookRentals.com or RentBack (www.RentBack.com) a donation is made to Operation Smile! RentBack is new initiative that allows students to rent the textbooks they own – to other students… which is awesome because it makes them 2-4x more money compared to what they’d make through buyback options! (selling their books back at the end of the semester) Isn’t that awesome?!
Check out the Clip Below…
Interested???
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**I was compensated for the following post. However, the story and opinions are 100% my own**
