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"My name is Min Zhu Lei. I'm three years old and already, I'm wary of strangers. All too often, they stare at me, or look away in disgust or horror.
I have a cleft lip and my mother and I came to the medical mission in Xi'an, China looking for help. My family, including my mother, father, older brother and sister live in very poor conditions, and ever since I was born, we've been looking for an opportunity or money to get treatment for me. "
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I first heard about cleft lip and cleft palate when I was pregnant with Ben in my 2nd trimester. Our gynae mentioned that in one of our monthly check-ups, he will do an ultrasound scan to check whether our baby is normal, in terms of whether he/she has Down syndrome and has cleft lip/palate condition. I was like 'Huh? What?' and read more when I got back home. It is heartbreaking for any parents to see their children having this condition. I came across this website and would like to share with you about "Operation Smile".
Some info about "Operation Smile":
"Operation Smile is a charity organization healing children's smiles, making the world a better place. Every three minutes a child is born with a cleft — often unable to eat, speak, socialize or smile. In some places these children are shunned and rejected. And in too many cases, their parents can't afford to give them the surgeries they need to live a normal life.
Since 1982, Operation Smile — through the help of dedicated medical volunteers — has provided more than 2 million patient evaluations and over 200,000 free surgeries for children and young adults born with cleft lips, cleft palates and other facial deformities. Thanks to the generosity and spirit of volunteerism shown by our supporters, we heal thousands of children per year. With your help, how many lives can we change tomorrow?"
If you have any relatives or friends who are in college, then this is one of the many ways you can help in supporting this great cause! All you need to do is to rent text books! Yes, you read it correctly!
Some info about CampusBookRentals.com:
"CampusBookRentals.com began renting textbooks in August of 2007. They served thousands and thousands of customers on more than 5,000 different college campuses in the fabulous USA. You can be confident in their customer service and reliability and they work like maniacs to get books to their customers on time, make things right when something goes wrong, and provide fast and responsive customer service.
Every rental comes with a worry free guarantee within the first 30 days of your order if you drop your class or change your mind, you keep more cash in your pocket up front, you can order from the comfort of your home or office, it doesn’t cost a penny to return your rented textbooks when you're done with them (they even provide the package), and you don’t have to worry about disappointing buyback prices at the end of the semester."
The awesome thing about this company is they have officially teamed up with Operation Smile for their 2011 Making a Difference Program. So for EVERY book rented starting now, they will donate a portion of those proceeds to Operation Smile.
Awesome right? So, do go ahead and spread out this news!
** Disclosure: This is a sponsored post. All thoughts, opinions and words are 100 % my own.