By Sandy Kemper | Director and Founder of Smiles Forever's School
Holiday Greetings for our Global Giving Friends: All of us at "Send Homeless Bolivian Woman to School for a Year" wish you a happy holiday season and blessings and joy in the year ahead. In 2012 we provided full dental treatment to over 7,000 children from the under-served populations of Bolivia.
Serving 7,000 Indigenous Bolivians: Including HIV positive children, Burn Patients, Homeless Children & Children with Birth Defects. Besides providing dental cleanings, fillings, and preventative dental care to children affected by HIV, burn patients, and homeless children, we strive to connect children who have congenital birth defects with dental professionals in Bolivia.
Success Story of Baby Burton: Born with Multiple Birth Defects & Now Overcoming Cultural Bias & being fitted with a Hearing Aid. Meet Baby Burton who is now standing for the first time with a little help from his dad. Baby Burton, now two-and-a-half years old, was born with a cleft palate. He was also missing both thumbs and found to be deaf. We stepped in and coordinated other professionals in Cochabamba to help his family. This fortunate todler is now walking, eating solid food for the first time, and being fitted for a hearing aid. His case, like so many others, is complicated by cultural values and concerns, and a lack of education. We are working with his family to help them understand that they should not be ashamed of their child's birth defects. This Christmas, Baby Burton is not wearing a hat to cover his misshapen ears, but instead is walking proudly unencumbered.
Your Help Makes our Unique Dental Hygiene School Possible. Thank you for showing that you care for Baby Burton, and so many like him, by supporting our groundbreaking work here in Bolivia, one of the poorest nations in Latin America. We can continue to train young indigenious women, and thus give them a skill so that they might become examples and leaders in their community, because of your help.
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