Utah students to participate in Operation Smile

OGDEN — Skyline High senior Brittany McDowell has five months to prepare for an experience she says will probably change her life — two weeks of helping to give needy children smiles, literally.

Last month Operation Smile gave McDowell a two-week assignment to Managua, Nicaragua. There she will teach children and families about health care, hygiene and after-surgery procedures for Operation Smile patients.

About 30 other students, including three others from Utah, also got their assignments after attending training at Weber State University that would prepare them to instruct families served by the organization.

Operation Smile is an international charity that provides free reconstructive surgery to children and young adults around the world suffering from facial deformities — specifically cleft lips and cleft palates.

Teams include surgeons, nurses, pediatricians, speech therapists, anesthesiologists and other volunteers who spend around 10 days in a developing country performing operations and educating families on different areas of health care.

In the United States around one in 800 children is born with a facial deformity. But in the developing countries that Operation Smile ventures into, deformities are found about one in 500.

Lisa Jones, spokeswoman for the organization, said children who are born with defects are often isolated and abandoned by peers. Many seldom leave their homes and don't attend school. Some are even left in orphanages.

She said aside from the social isolation, they often have trouble eating and speaking properly.

"When they come to the mission, people are happy to see them, and the kids can really come out of their shells, because they don't get that kind of attention, and you can see that excitement," Jones said.

Tracy Cohen, a senior from New Jersey who went to Morocco on her first mission last year, said she also got to visit orphanages and teach children about dental hygiene, hand out toothbrushes and give them Burger King hats — gifts the children thought were priceless.

Jones said a lot of the children who come to the missions are visiting a physician for the first time. That can be daunting for someone who doesn't understand why people in white jackets are prodding at them.

The students who accompany the missions also help familiarize the children with what is going to happen to them.