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8th Grader Volunteer for "Smile Operation"

December 13, 2017

8th Grader Volunteer for "Smile Operation"

Every three minutes there will be a baby born with a cleft lip or cleft palate. Their world is full of loneliness and inferiority, and smiling is a luxury to them. In the frontier areas of Yunnan province, where it’s far from the city and very poor, there live many children who have cleft lips or cleft palates.

Operation smile is a charity that helps the people (especially children) who live in the rural places where and can’t afford the high price of surgery by giving them free, safe surgery.

I joined this event in Wenshan, Yunnan from November 15th to the 22nd. The whole event can be split into two parts: Screening and Surgery.

On the scanning day, we screened a total of 179 people, and only 120 of them could do the surgery (some did not reach the bottom line of height, weight or age, and some had illnesses which prevented the surgery).

Surgery covered 3 days of the whole charity process. We finished 117 surgeries across those 3 days, averaging 39 surgeries per day.

As a non-medical volunteer, my job was to take care of the children that were preparing for surgery ,and the after-surgery check.

The children were adorable just like normal kids. They are patient and smart, and playing with them in the waiting room made me feel very happy and warm. I felt a bond between me and them grow as we communicated more.

This experience has made me learn how lucky I am having everything I need in life, and having the opportunity to be educated. Also, this event has showed me how all the people involved worked together and completed all the surgeries on time and got the children home safely. It was a very special experience and I’ll keep doing it and give as much effort as possible.

(Written by Jessie Chen8(7) Directed by Ms. Gu Pictures by Jessie Chen8(7))