Volunteer for translation to spanish?
Thank you very much to Sven Van Loo (Belgian) who translated all our website to Spanish!
Our Mission
The mission of Caras Felices - Cleft Surgery Organization is to provide free cleft surgery for affected children from poor families. Clefts are a major problem in developing countries, where millions of children suffer from unoperated clefts. Most of them cannot eat or speak properly and live in shame and isolation.
22 May: Golf Competition and Gala Lunch for fundraising
On the 22nd of May 2010, Marbella Golf Club prepares a Golf Competition and Gala Lunch or Dinner between Doctors, Dentists, Lawyers, Notaries, Bankers, Gestors, Accountants.
The event is in aid of raising funds for cleft surgery for the "Cara Felices" foundation.
Dr. Bart operating in Kenya
The problem with cleft patients is they don’t have a life-threatening disease. That sounds strange, but is true. In countries where people don’t have enough money to fill their stomachs, they won’t spend their small income on such an operation. That means that many of these children won’t be operated on and they risk becoming socially isolated.
These countries hardly have a social security system. This means that you completely depend on your family. If you don’t manage to find a partner for life, so you won’t have children, it’s likely that at a certain point you’ll have to manage completely alone. Many won’t survive this.
What We Do
The organization provides free cleft surgery to people who cannot afford it. This is realized in two different ways: by going to the patients in developing countries or bringing the patients to Marbella in Southern Spain.
1. Going to the patients
Dr Bart van de Ven and his colleagues bi-annually organize 2-week long missions to developing countries in order to conduct and teach cleft surgeries on affected children. An average of 100 children are helped every year. The cost of one operation performed in a developing country is around 200 €. 
2. Bringing the patients to Marbella
Another plan came up after receiving desperate emails from parents or adult cleft patients around the world. Since it is inefficient and costly for us to travel to each country for a single patient, we intend to bring them to the hospital in Marbella, Spain. The expenses for bringing a patient accompanied by one person to Marbella is estimated to be around 1500€. The USP hospital is willing to work for free in case the patient can not afford paying.
Tenzin Cheoyang 7 months old from Tibet and Madalina Alexandru 22 years old from Rumania were brought to Marbella and operated on successfully in March 2009.
Cleft Lip
A cleft lip doesn't only mean an open lip. Most of the time also the jaw and palate are involved. Apart from a disformed appearance, there is great difficulty in eating and speaking and there are numerous infections of the middle-ear. In fact, because of all these problems in some countries many of these children are not allowed to live. 
A cleft lip is relatively simple to correct by one or two operations. Operations, however, that many just cannot afford.
By supporting us financially, you enable us to give these people a chance to have a normal life. Each time after having completed a mission, we will show you the pictures of the patients we operated on our website
DONATIONS
Sponsored by:
