Meti in Ethiopia - Dreams can come true

Will is heading to India for Operation Smile

Guwahati, India: Nov. 30–Dec. 20, 2010

More than 80 volunteers from around the world will join their counterparts in India with a goal to provide surgeries for 500 children at the Mahendra Mohan Choudhary Hospital.


In a few short weeks, our expanded mission to Guwahati, India, will be underway. To meet the unprecedented need in this area, Operation Smile will be sending two medical teams who will work back-to-back from November 30 through December 20.

More than 80 volunteers from around the world will join their counterparts in India with a goal to provide surgeries for 500 children at the Mahendra Mohan Choudhary Hospital. Operation Smile has been working in Guwahati since 2009 and to date has provided free cleft lip or cleft palate surgeries for nearly 2,000 patients.

During this mission, a campaign called “Smile for NUK” will be underway and includes products designed for feeding that have been donated to the medical mission. We know that hundreds of children are waiting and we are anxious to join the teams on site and provide the surgeries they really need.

- Allison Bradshaw and Kia Guarino, Program Coordinators, Operation Smile

Reba for the American Red Cross

Jeff Probst visits Granada, Nicaragua for Operation Smile

Granada Nicaragua for Operation Smile

What a day in Nicaragua

A million dollar day for us today. Roma Downey and her daughter Reilly did a stellar job with our NEW bilateral boy, Eduardo and his beautiful and graceful mother, Noemi. They sat with Noemi and Eduardo gently learning of the horror his mother felt at his birth with a bilateral cleft lip. When Noemi went to a pediatrician all the way in Managua, he told her that a team from Operation Smile was going to be in Granada the week of the 21st. He told her to drop whatever else she was doing and get to the hospital. It would be Eduardo's only chance.

Eduardo was handed off to the nurses at the door to the operating room leaving his mother full of anxiety...and hope. Forty-five minutes later Roma delivered Eduardo into his mother's arms, a boy with a brand new smile and a whole new chance in life. With hugs and kisses Roma, Reilly and Noemi celebrated Eduardo's new birth.

Then Jeff Probst, the host of Survivor which is shooting in Nicaragua, hit the mission site and got to experience the miracle of Operation Smile surgery first hand. He saw our little 6 year-old boy Johan go into surgery. Jeff was very interested in everything. He got the fine points of anethesia from one of the best in the business and looked over the shoulder of a world-class surgeon as stich by stich Johan was transformed. Then in post-op Jeff learned from Johan's mother, Erica, just what life was like for Johan growing up with a cleft lip and being called "cleft boy" by other kids. She told him that even though Johan was constantly ridiculed and teased, he never gave up. Now he won't have to. Jeff turned to the camera and in no uncertain terms encouraged viewers to get off the couch and do something wonderful. Do something for someone less fortunate. Do something that matters.

What a day in Nicaragua. The team will be here for two more days, but Jim and I fly out tomorrow, heading home richer by far and full of memories that will last a lifetime.

Operation Smile Nicaragua

Roma and Reilly did a great job relating to kids and their families. About 50 kids showed up for screening. The vast majority were revisions, 8 were cleft palates. There were 5 kids with lips. One was a facial cleft girl, 6 months old. The surgeons are putting her on the schedule later in the week, but say that the result will not be good and that she will require several surgeries to fix her lip and nose. Two other lips were girls, one 2 months old, one 3 months old. We settled on 2 boys, both named Christopher, one is 7 months old and the other 14 months old, but looks 6 months. Reilly and Roma really took to the little boys and their mothers. We followed these boys through screening and one boy, the 7 year old, who has a revision, but he is a cutie named Johan. The two younger boys and the young girls with lips were all rejected because of illness (blood count, infections, fevers, etc). Roma and Reilly were devastated even though the local team promised that these kids will get their turn soon. That leaves us with Johan who is on the schedule for tomorrow morning. We'll follow him and also pickup another kid (hopefully a girl) from Pre-Op tomorrow. Three surgeries were performed this evening. A tongue tie, a revision and a cleft palate. Reilly and Roma did a stand up intro, related to the camera during screening and then did an end-of-day recap. They work well together. They were wet dishrags going back to the hotel...as were we all. Tomorrow we will follow Johan from 7:30am to 10:30am, see what other kid we can follow, then plan on getting some reflections from Roma and Reilly of the mission experience, record some VO. The Survivor team arrives in 2 groups. Group one comes at 8:00am for a couple of hours. Jeff arrives at 10:30 and leaves at noon. All of this is happening at the same time as our scheduled kids, but we'll do what we can. The team is a good one. Well organized. They have scheduled 32 surgeries and hope to do a few more depending on time and health of patients. That's it from Nicaragua. Best to you all back in the states.