Smile Train, Inc. empowers local medical professionals with training, funding, and resources to provide free cleft surgery and comprehensive cleft care to children globally.

Vision: A world where every person has access to safe, high-quality comprehensive cleft care and is able to live a full and healthy life. We achieve our vision through four key strategies: 1: Ensuring access to safe, high-quality comprehensive cleft care through a proven, sustainable partnership model 2: Strengthening local health systems through investment, resources, and building the capacity of local medical professionals 3: Driving innovation by leveraging technology and research to transform global cleft care 4: Fostering a global cleft community through awareness and education to reduce stigma and ensure acceptance of people with clefts

Source: Nonprofit submitted responses

Goal One: Advocate for governments to take appropriate action and prioritize cleft care

Goal Type: This goal reflects our commitment to further our advocacy work for our organization and or cause area.

Goal Two: Expand comprehensive cleft care and partner capacity while ensuring rigorous safety standards

Goal Type: Grow, expand, scale or increase access to the existing programs and services.

Goal Three: Use our data to innovate and improve our systems and maximize impact

Goal Type: Invest in the capacity of our organization (financial, management, technical, etc.).

Describe an investment in leadership

Smile Train is supportive of both career- and job-related professional development activities and recognizes that these opportunities increase individuals' skills and enhance their contributions to the organization and overall work performance. As such, they are vital to the success of the organization. Smile Train uses a professional development program as a mechanism for fostering growth and learning. All full-time staff are eligible to attend courses and other training media that will enhance their career development and are in line with the organization's vision. Professional development can be obtained through attending conferences, seminars, educational courses, webinars, and other programs that will assist the individual in performing essential job functions and increase the caliber of their contributions to the organization.

This organization mobilizes for mission in the following ways:

• Strategic Partnerships

• Networks of Collective Impact Efforts

• Thought Leadership

• Raising Awareness

• Community Building

• Policy Advocacy

What are this organization’s external mobilizaton efforts?

Strategic Partnerships: We proudly partner with like-minded organizations, including Lifebox, KidsOR, and the WHO's Art for Health Initiative; Thought Leadership: Employees and board members frequently present at major conferences and publish research. We also recently formed our Smile Train Research and Innovation Advisory Council, a think tank of cleft experts; Raising Awareness: We run global fundraising programs and produce PSAs about clefts and their treatment across various mediums including TV, radio, Out of Home, and print advertising; Community Building: Our efforts at fostering a global cleft community include choirs made up of our speech therapy patients and Cleft Con, an annual gathering of the US cleft community; Policy/Advocacy: We lobby for cleft birth registries in LMICs, passage of the Ensuring Lasting Smiles Act in the US, and other policies to benefit the cleft community.

Smile Train’s top priority remains, as always, the safety and well-being of our beneficiaries, medical partners, friends, family, and global supporters. Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, we estimate that more than 54,000 free, lifesaving cleft surgeries have been put on hold. Where it is safe to do so, we are hard at work resuming surgeries, and our nimble teams have adapted to constantly changing conditions. Since March 2020, we have supported more than 120,000 safe cleft surgeries in 75+ countries, and our partners around the globe are operating at 79% capacity compared to the same period pre-pandemic. We are continuing to support our international teams based on their unique needs, and many of our local medical partners are still on the ground acting as invaluable resources to their communities. Smile Train has invested in the distribution of more than $2M in necessary equipment for partners and patients, including personal protective equipment (PPE), handwashing and sanitation facilities, pulse oximeters, non-contact infrared thermometers, masks, and grants to fund COVID testing. We’re making these essential items available to empower partners to continue cleft care while protecting themselves and their patients. We’ve also increased our investment in grants to cover treatment-related expenses like transportation, lodging, and food for patients and their families. Where surgeries have been postponed, our providers continue to use telehealth to remain in touch with their patients, helping to care for them even while remaining socially distant. During the pandemic, we have supported 35,000+ sessions of telehealth services to 15,000+ patients. Since the pandemic began, Smile Train has hosted 3,600+ training sessions, both virtual and in-person, for 26,500+ medical professionals across 89 countries. A great majority of these professionals (23,500+) attended one of 413 virtual sessions.