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Sunday, March 05, 2006
If you just smile
By Jenara Regis Newman
A true sense of fulfillment can only be had by sharing – be it in time, talent or resources. Which is why the spirit of volunteerism appeals to people and why projects like Operation Smile goes on from year to year, involving more and more people and entailing greater resources, all for the sake of a smile from and, in effect a better future for one who could not smile because of a physical deformity.
This is the ninth year Operation Smile (OS) has come to Cebu and this year, it had over a hundred volunteers (46 from abroad), giving hope and smiles to 188 children with cleft palate and/or harelip and other facial deformities.
Among the many volunteers was Menchu Sarmiento, representing PAL (Philippine Airlines) Foundation which sponsored a lunch for the volunteers and who also came with two wheelchairs from Tokyo’s Tzu Chi Buddhist Compassion Foundation with Jaipur Foot Mahaveer Foundation for Pastor Paul Healey’s Cebu Children’s Center.
Menchu, a daughter of two Supreme Court Justices (Carolina Griño Aquino and the late Ramon Aquino) and the daughter-in-law of one (Abraham Sarmiento) joined PAL Foundation in 1999 and has effectively channeled PAL’s resources for medical travel grants to the needy. For OS, she worked to abolish the ceiling of P100,000 in travel discounts; PAL now gives a 50% discount to OS volunteers.
This UP Fine Arts graduate who wrote “Daisy Nueve” (a collection of short stories published by Anvil which got the National Book Award in 2004) and who writes features for the Free Press, Graphic and the Philippine Daily Inquirer, also took post graduate studies in family life and child development . So last year, she volunteered to send a Child Life Volunteer to entertain the children, allay their fears, before being operated on.
For Menchu, seeing the faces of the facially deformed is seeing the face of poverty and so she has helped not only OS but also others needing special medical attention (like the conjoined Aguirre twins of Negros who are now still in the US after PAL flew them and their doctor there to be surgically separated.)
Cebu volunteers are not wanting, either. One of them, Dr. Allain Senerpida, has been with Operations Smile since six years ago, after his fellowship training in general surgery at Cebu Doctors’ Hospital. On an OS week, Dr. Senerpida says he averages 30 operations. It may be tiring but, in his words, “The feeling is so different to be able to change the life of a child because of a one-hour operation.”
Partly because of his involvement with OS, Dr. Senerpida trained for fellowship in plastic surgery at the Makati Medical Consotium (Makati Med, UERM, Rizal Medical and Veterans Medical Center) and this May, Operation Smile has scheduled him for a two-week training in cranio-facial surgery at the OS headquarters in Norfolk, Virginia.
Dr. Senerpida’s involvement with OS has made him go on medical missions on his own, inviting others to help those who need medical/surgical help in rural areas. He says, “ Our patients sometimes hide because of their deformity. After their operation, they can face the world, go to school and live normal lives. Even the people whom I invited, not necessarily doctors, find the feeling is so different. Enlightening.”
For truly, man is a social animal. He needs to share success, talent, resources in order to feel truly fulfilled as a human being.
For Bisaya stories from Cebu. Click here. (March 4, 2006 issue)
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