Testimonials: Before and After Smiles...

Operation Smile's volunteer medical professionals travel around the world to treat children suffering from facial deformities. Their efforts mean new smiles for thousands of children, including these former patients:

Ngan

Thanh

Julieanne

Louie

Vietnam - Thanh

“Sut” means split lip and is a terrible name for a child. But for the first nine years of Thanh's life that's what he was called by everyone in the village. Every day, the cleft lip he was born with caused him pain and humiliation. On his first day of school, the other children taunted him so mercilessly because of his disfigured mouth that he refused to go back. It seemed that his whole life would be ruined by his deformity.

Then, Operation Smile came along. During the mission to Vung Tau, Vietnam, Thanh received a new smile, new friends, and reclaimed his birth name, Thanh, which means, “Blue Sky.” Thanh has now returned to school and to life, and the future is filled with hope.