Creating smiles – and managing miracles – all across China

by Martin Moodie |
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Martin Moodie

Martin Moodie

Martin Moodie is the Founder & Chairman of The Moodie Report.

Meet Monica, Shell and Robert – the small, amazingly dedicated team who run The Smile Train China.

I dropped into their office in downtown Beijing today to hear from Shell Xue (second from left), who heads the team, about their success to date and their plans for the future. What an inspiring story it is.

Amazingly, The Smile Train China funded 27,144 cleft lip and/or palate operations during the fiscal year ended June 2008. That’s up nearly 26% from 21,575 the year before, an incredible effort given the size of the team – and the scale of the country.

Shell is an amazing woman, who spoke with incredible conviction, humility and dignity at last October’s travel retail industry fund-raising dinner in Hong Kong (she is pictured below left on stage at that dinner with Wang Li, the first patient to have had a cleft operation funded by The Smile Train China), which raised well over US$300,000 for The Smile Train, the world’s leading cleft charity.

Shell told me today how grateful she was for the amazing level of support The Smile Train is getting from the travel retail industry – and asked me especially to thank all the donors around the world from within our business. Every single Dollar matters when you are doing a job like Shell’s.

Since last October’s dinner, The Smile Train China has increased the number of hospitals it funds from 154 to 395 – a direct result of the funding generated by the travel retail sector and other donations.

Sometimes charities seem faceless. The Smile Train is anything but that. Very real people are seeing their lives transformed. Very real people are working hard every day to facilitate miracles. And very real people in travel retail are helping to fund those miracles.

  • Hi from Smile Train,

    What a great article! This was a moving, genuine portrayal of what Smile Train does in China – and all the hard work and dedicated individuals that go into making these miracles every day. Thank you to the travel retail industry for helping us help these children, and bringing not just new smiles, but a second chance at life to children in China and the rest of the world.

    Best wishes, and thank you again for your work. You inspire us to continue our efforts.

    Alex Judd
    Donor Relations Associate
    ajudd@smiletrain.org

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