Our Stories

Operation Smile believes in offering the most comprehensive care possible at our medical missions and care centers around the world. After more than three decades of listening to the emotional…

Early in the morning, Operation Smile’s team of medical specialists arrive at Hospital Alemán Nicaragüense to prepare for the two surgeries to be performed that day. Iris is one of…

As soon as Iris gets off the bus and, together with her mother, moves through the crowds of people at a bus station in Managua, Nicaragua, she hides. Walking behind…

From Cape Coast to Koforidua, the Operation Smile Ghana team has rapidly changed the way people living in the most remote and impoverished places in the country are accessing cleft…

Nury sits on a sofa in their home in Bogotá, Colombia, trying to recall the moment that her first-born child, Luciana, entered the world. “She was born on a Friday…

I joined Operation Smile in 1991 when I was a plastic surgery resident back in Colombia. Operation Smile was much smaller back then, and I had the opportunity to get…

Mirna traveled for 15 hours to get to the Operation Smile medical mission in Estelí, Nicaragua today. She walked an hour and took five different buses. Along the way, she…

Felista did everything she thought she should do during her pregnancy: She ate well and received full prenatal care. She and her husband, Steve, were already the proud parents of a…