Healing children's smiles. Making the world a better place.

At Operation Smile, we measure ourselves by the joy we see on children's faces. We're more than a charity. More than an NGO. We're a mobilized force of medical professionals and caring hearts who provide safe, effective reconstructive surgery for children born with facial deformities such as cleft lip and cleft palate.

More than 200,000 children are born with a severe cleft condition each year — often unable to eat, speak, socialize or smile. In some places these children are shunned and rejected. And in too many cases, their parents can't afford to give them the surgeries they need to live a normal life.

That's where we come in. Since 1982, Operation Smile — through the help of dedicated medical volunteers — has provided free surgeries to children around the world. With a presence in over 50 countries, we are able to heal children’s smiles and bringing hope for a better future.

Thanks to the generosity and spirit of volunteerism shown by our supporters, we heal thousands of children per year and, today, more than 150,000 girls and boys have a new chance at a new life because of our work. With your help, how many lives can we change tomorrow?

Operation Smile mobilizes a world of generous hearts to heal children's smiles and transform lives across the globe.

We believe that all children deserve to live their lives with dignity. And for those suffering from cleft lip, cleft palate or other facial deformities, dignity begins with a smile.

Driven by our universal compassion for children, we work worldwide to repair childhood facial deformities by delivering safe, effective surgical care directly to patients. The global partnerships we create, the knowledge we share and the infrastructure we build leave a legacy that lives well beyond our medical missions, making a lasting difference in our world.

Our impact is felt not just through the children we heal, but through the daily transformation of donors, volunteers and staff as we fulfill our shared vision and see immediate, life-changing results.

Operation Smile is distinguished by excellence. We work around the world, in some of the most remote places, to ensure all children born with cleft lip or cleft palate have the opportunity to be healed. We apply global standards of safety and hygiene to all of our procedures and post-op care to ensure that our patients and their families receive the highest level of care, cleanliness, respect and dignity.

These standards are leading the world into a new frontier of safe, effective surgical care that is available anywhere it is needed.

Six ways you know it's Operation Smile

We reach the unreachable

Our medical missions mobilize medical professionals from all over the world to treat children with facial deformities. We bring together the latest, most effective practices and training to deliver safe surgery to remote places where it is not available, often in the developing world. The impact of our missions is lasting. When each mission is over, we leave behind a legacy of trained medical staff, surgical equipment and professional partnerships that work year-round to ensure more children are healed and more lives are changed.

We work from the heart

Operation Smile surgeries are conducted by our credentialed medical volunteer base of thousands of surgeons, anesthesiologists, dentists, nurses and other professionals. These dedicated individuals donate time and talent throughout the world, giving children a new chance at life. Our volunteers are the drive, the spirit and the reason we've been able to provide over 150,000 new smiles at no cost to our patients and their families.

We apply Global Standards of Care

We bring the highest quality of care to every child, every time. We are the only cleft organization supporting the World Health Organization's "Safe Surgery Saves Lives" initiative. Our Global Standards of Care is our commitment to ensuring that every patient cared for by Operation Smile will benefit from the same sophisticated equipment, procedures and highly trained, credentialed medical professionals, no matter where they receive treatment.

We build self-sufficiency worldwide

The global demand for cleft repair surgery is staggering and can only be met if we build a self-sustaining solution. Education, training, medical equipment, best surgical practices and an expanding network of Operation Smile Care Centers are some of our highest priorities. With a presence in over 50 countries, more than half of our missions originate in-country and follow the proven Operation Smile model — allowing us to deliver essential high-quality care to more and more children each year.

We lead the way

Raising awareness and fighting to end the occurrence of cleft conditions are major initiatives. Our student leadership programs, network of global foundations, and research and advocacy efforts in the world health community are making significant strides in these initiatives. We're also leading the way for nonprofits in the Web 2.0 world with our online community for students to interact with each other, learn more about childhood facial deformities and understand how they are empowered to make a difference. In engaging students from kindergarten all the way to college, we aim to build future leaders and humanitarians who will mobilize to help heal more smiles worldwide.

We continually educate and train

Worldwide education is one of the cornerstones of who we are. We are steadfast in our commitment to help build local expertise through intensive and ongoing training and sharing of best practices on a global level. Working through a collaboration of volunteers, business leaders, universities and governments, our goal is to create an expanding network of highly trained local medical volunteers that will provide the best care possible to the children we help.

More than 200,000 children are born with cleft lip and cleft palate each year, and the condition threatens both the life and livelihood of the child. Learn more about clefting here.