At Gentle Dental we feel it’s important to give back.
Each year we support a different charity in Salisbury or Wiltshire. However this year (2018-2019) we are supporting Operation smile.
Our dentist Rob has a fantastic opportunity to volunteer on a mission in Ghana to aid with operations on people with cleft lip and palate. The oldest person we know of that Operation Smile helped was 86! Imagine having to live with this for all those years.
In this country usually cleft lip and palate repair starts from about 3 months old so you never grow up with this disability.
Operation Smile's international missions are conducted throughout the year in hard-to-reach places throughout the world. International missions involve up to 60 medical volunteers who travel to partner countries to provide surgeries over a two-week period.
Rob’s role will be on the administrative side. Hundreds of people turn up, some having travelled days or weeks, in the hope of having the operation for them or their child.
Over a two day period each person is assessed from a health point of view to ensure they are suitable for the operation. Day 3 is a tough day as it is when people find out if they have been chosen for the operation or not. Heart breaking for those who are not suitable and for the volunteers who have to break the news and handle their disappointment. Rob will be involved in these 3 days sorting paperwork, chatting with and reassuring everyone to make the long day pass.
The reason people are not suitable is often due to poor health or the fact that they are malnourished. These people are given health and nutrition advice as well as medicine and nutrition packs in the hope that next time the mission visits they will be healthy enough to have the life changing operation.
Days 4 and 5 are operating and recovery days. A joyous time for the volunteers after the initials tough days of delivering disappointing news. And then Rob heads back home likely exhausted, hope exhilarated and inspired.
Gentle Dental and all members of the MiSmile network of Invisalign dentists already collaborate with Operation Smile. Every time we start an Invisalign treatment we, the network donate £7 to Operation Smile as well as fundraising at our annual conference.
Each time you refer a family member or a friend to us we will donate £10 to Operation Smile.
You can also choose to donate blankets, medicines, nutrition packs and lots more. Click on the link to see more and to help this wonderful charity to change lives.
In 2019/2020 we decided to support Salisbury Trust for the Homeless but sadly with lockdown and restrictions we could not take part in any events to raise extra funds. Our way to thank current clients for their faith and confidence in us is to make a £10 charity donation when a new client registers with us following a personal recommendation. Many of our new clients come via Google and site the reviews on our website as the reason they choose us over another practice. So this year we treated every mention of the reviews as a personal recommendation and our contribution to the charity was £1060.
Our Charity for 2021 is The Trussell Trust as food banks are so important currently and the number of people depending on them to feed their families is increasing constantly. Because it has been difficult to actually instigate anything much, we will be supporting this charity for 2022 also and will get involved with their fund raising events as well as sorting some things ourselves.