By Nancy Clark | Project Leader
Re-crafting our Smiles Forever Mission: Failing Forward Discovery
In 16 years we have failed to certify hundreds of indigenous women as dental hygienists, but we have succeeded in bringing thousands of native Bolivian children critically needed dental care and education!
Have you heard the story of the old farmer with ponds who decided to raise frogs? Try as he might the old farmer just couldn’t get a frog population to take hold & time and again he was losing money and patience. The trouble was, he had turtles choking out the frogs. One day his grandchild walked out to look at the ponds with him and asked, “Why don’t you grow turtles?”
Eureka, that’s the answer which had been eluding us. Why not concentrate our main thrust of Smiles Forever on serving the children in shelters or the Bolivian children and their families who so much need dental care—the turtles who multiply virtually on their own? Why not step back from some of the costly foibles of recruiting and putting the indigenous young women through the lengthy dental hygienist education schooling as our main focus—the vulnerable frogs of our story?
While we will never abandon the idea that educating a woman brings stability and change for the better, there has to be an easier way. This year our project model for educating and then serving a broader population won the Sunstar International Dental Hygienist top project award! Now our ground-breaking work is recognized world-wide as the way to beat the odds in a 3rd World country—others will copy our success.
However, let’s move to allowing those turtles to multiply freely and move beyond the focus of a few select frogs. Here’s how.
Because of the recognition of our Smiles Forever commitment to dental care in Bolivia, we have achieved a level of governmental approval. Our Founder & Director, Sandy Kemper, has a vision of preserving her pioneering educational work by allowing the program to be woven into the fabric of the Bolivian university structure. This is possible because the very perception of the value of a dental hygienist in a professional dental office has changed. A dozen years ago it was unheard of to use a woman in a practice to assist a dentist. How times have changed! One of our dental hygienists has become a full-fledged dentist and what is part of a beautiful story—returned to Smiles Forever as an instructor and clinician.
The numbers speak—less than 50 indigenous women have completed their dental hygienist training, but over 30,000 indigenous children and their communities have received dental care. Now that we recognize our primary mission should be to grow turtles, the sky is the limit. There is no reason we can’t bring dental care to 50,000 in the future. We could let that be the thrust of our mission & have the goal of adding 20,000 more by 2020! You have been there to help us, and we know you will enthusiastically be with us in our continuing humanitarian endeavors as we morph from frogs to turtles!
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By Nancy Clark | Project Leader
By Nancy Clark | Project Leader
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