Volunteer Stories

It is a tradition, at the end of a medical mission, to gather together the “team” – that group of extraordinary people who came together to deliver new smiles to…

Without its global network of selfless, caring and generous volunteers, Operation Smile simply wouldn’t exist. The organization’s free, life-changing cleft surgeries are only made possible by people who unite from…

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…

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…

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…

This July, ten Canadian high school student leaders joined hundreds of other students from around the world at Operation Smile’s 27th Annual International Student Leadership Conference in Seattle. At this…

Before Sabrina Ghiddi became involved with Operation Smile’s work in Ghana as a nonmedical volunteer in 2013, she didn’t know that the organization existed. However, the Italian transplant did know…

Dr. Opoku Ampomah walks side by side with his patient, 17-year-old Faustina, down the corridor that leads to the operating rooms at Eastern Regional Hospital in Koforidua, Ghana. It’s the…