Provide Dental Care for 67,000 Bolivian Children!

Smiles Forever will bring dental care to 650 highlands children through an exciting partnership between two valued GlobalGiving organizations:  Smiles Forever and Refuge Rafael. An inter-institutional agreement was signed which will not only promote dental health with education and screenings and dentistry care, but will also launch a long-term research study using SDF.  SDF is a silver diamide fluoride treatment which can arrest decay.

The scope of our work:

It is very pleasing for the Smiles Forever Foundation to announce our work and collaboration in favor of the San Rafael Refuge (located in the outskirts of Cochabamba – Bolivia), which is also a beneficiary of the GlobalGiving platform, a means by which we were able to initiate contact with this organization and later sign an inter-institutional agreement that allows us to work in pursuit of the oral health of the beneficiaries of a program as positive as the San Rafael Refuge.

The signing of this agreement also led to better and larger projects, since together with the San Rafael Refuge, work is being done on the development of a pilot program for the application of Fluor Diamino de Plata (SDF) that will benefit 320 children.   Our initial collaboration began by assessing the acute needs at our Cochabamba clinic.  Several children were screened and helped here in Cochabamba which is under a two hour commute from the refuge. 

Recently, our founder Sandy Kemper visited from the United States and she was greeted with a special dance performance.  The final objective is to be able to provide dental services to the more than 650 children of the Marquina elementary school, an elementary school in the area where the San Rafael refuge is located, as well as the establishment and refurbishment of a pre-existing dental unit that is currently abandoned due to lack of resources, supplies and professionals in the field who can provide the service that is non-existent in the area at the moment.  Added to this is the very poor dental situation of the children who attend this school, a situation that was determined through an on-site evaluation visit for sampling.

We also want to thank all the members that make up the community of donors as well as all those who make up GlobalGiving since their work and support allows us to be able to help other programs that make up this wonderful community and the donors whose donations have a direct impact on the life and development of the beneficiaries of both organizations.