Servelloism

On Tuesday night I had the opportunity to go to the 10 year Anniversary celebration for a great charity called Smile Train. I was honored to represent our church as our church gave a significant amount to this charity last year. I came across Smile Train in 2007 while looking for a charity to give a personal donation to at Christmas time. Little did I know this would spark our doing Advent Conspiracy in 2008. This 10 year anniversary celebrated 500,000 children getting surgery to repair clefts. Just in case your trying to do the math thats almost 150 a day over the last 10 years. They had the very first patient Smile Train helped, her story was very moving. Actually, In one of the Asian countries they are actually wining the war on clefts as last year in one of their countries their were more surgeries done than those being born with clefts. It was an awesome night with some great entertainment by Ronin Tynan, one of the three Irish tenors, and  some movie stars. Colin Powell was a surprise guest at the party which was really cool. All in all it was a fun night. Here’s some of the reasons whay like Smile Train:

1. For a SMALL amount of money ($250) they make BIG difference in a child’s life.
2. Their business model is great. They get corporate sponsors to pay for advertising and administration costs and 100% of your donation goes to the surgery. Freakonmics talked about their business model.
3. They are educating local doctors to do this 45 minute surgery. This in turn allows for them to continue to have more surgeries done every year as they have more doctors being trained to do the procedure. Like I said in one country, for the first time, they will have more surgeries done than children born with clefts.