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Volunteering to help put true smiles on the faces of children around the world never fails to make me smile as well. I am an RN from the Post-Anesthetic Care Unit at the Civic Campus and have been working at The Ottawa Hospital for 35 years. I just completed my 25^th mission with Operation Smile, a charitable group that offers free surgery to repair cleft palates and cleft lips.

Photos from my March 6 to 16 trip to San Cristobal de Las Casas in Mexico are now mixed in with those from Guatemala, Jordan, Egypt, China, Honduras, Ethiopia, Kenya, Venezuela, India (six times) and others.

I always wanted to work with kids and this is how I’m doing it. You get to help kids, travel and meet nice people from all over the world.

On this past trip, I put in 12-hour days, caring for 104 patients who had 130 procedures over five days in the operating room, plus two days of screening and one day to set up the ORs and wards.

It costs me approximately $1,000 to go on a mission, with Operation Smile covering the rest of the cost. The organization is always looking for volunteer medical staff: nurses, speech-language therapists, pediatricians, dentists, plastic surgeons and child-life specialists. Translators assist them.

The work done by Operation Smile gives the kids their future back. They can eat better and speak. Now they can get married, have jobs, go to school. The little girls often come to the hospital in party dresses, with all their belongings in a plastic bag. It breaks your heart. So if you can help them, how can you not?

See OperationSmile.org for further information.

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