Journal Entry #1

THE JOURNEY HOME JOURNAL

by: Bobby Manzano, President & Executive Director, OSP

The numbers have been impressive to date: about 7,000 medical examinations; 6,110 dental treatments; 388 cleft lip and palate surgeries.

In only the second leg of The Journey Home, we’ve already touched the lives of thousands. As we move on, we’ll touch more --- the patients’, the volunteers’ and those of our donors and partners in this huge undertaking. 

The statistics tells only a fraction of the unfolding tale of The Journey Home.  Beyond the numbers are the poignant moments, the memorable encounters, the inspiring instances of compassion and the new learning in all the mission sites. Old friendships were reaffirmed there and new ones made. The Operation Smile family continues to grow. 

It is this human drama that plays out every day in the mission sites and the emotion it creates within our hearts that will fuel our drive to the future.    

Deo and Bill (top)

Catherine (above)

In Naga City, we met Deocel Cledera, 36, our very first patient in 1982. Now working as a computer operator at the provincial capitol, he visited the mission site just to say thank you.  But Bill saw Deo’s speech was still impaired and his upper lip could be further improved by another procedure.  The very next day, a Sunday supposedly scheduled for R&R and bonding, he and nine other volunteers operated on Deo.

Catherine Bandol, 26, who had a cleft lip surgery when she was four, also came, taking the first flight out of Manila after getting off from her call center job. She sang for us and pleaded afterwards for us to continue what we are doing so children like her can have a life.  The next day, she reported back to work. 

A young television actress, Jewel Mische, 22, took a leave of absence from the shoot of a top-rating daytime soap where she is one of the female leads, to do volunteer work in Naga.  She spoke with so much passion about our cause that some members of the media, who attended our press briefing, started asking how they can prompt the public to donate.

Jewel with a patient in Naga City

Mobile phone technology has made donating to Operation Smile Philippines easy.  One simply keys in the word SMILE and send it to 4483. Smart Communications made this facility available to us. 

The telecommunications company, the largest in the Philippines, has become so knowledgeable of Operation Smile through its involvement in The Journey Home that it developed a mobile application that would allow social workers in remote areas to document cleft cases and send the records to a central database via an enable cellular phone.  This technology has far-reaching implications for us in Operation Smile worldwide; it will help us find the patients.

Support from the Philippine business community for The Journey Home has been tremendous. The managing director of the local distributor of Havaianas footwear and the president of the biggest local toothpaste brand Hapee, for example, planed into Naga to personally turn over their respective company’s donation to Operation Smile Philippines.  

It’s been the same wherever we go.  We see local government units, non-governmental organizations, private businesses, civic groups, and ordinary people from different walks of life coming together to make our mission possible.  To tell all the stories we came across on our visit to the three other mission sites will take pages so I just picked a few that I think present valuable lessons for us.  

Student volunteer

Angeles City opened our eyes to new possibilities anchored on private-public partnership.  The mayor has built from scratch a new dialysis wing in the very hospital where we are holding our mission with the help of the private sector. His main partner in this undertaking, the Kapampangan Development Foundation or KDF, has welded the city’s and the province’s civic and business leaders into an effective non-partisan group that can mobilize resources for the benefit of indigents.  

We secured a commitment from Mayor Ed Pamintuan and KDF president Benny Ricafort to continue supporting our Angeles City mission, which we have been holding at least twice a year since 2008. But we expect bigger things to emerge out of this partnership.  We see a golden opportunity to create new infrastructures in the area that will take cleft care beyond what we are currently able to deliver in the Philippines. 

Bill and Kathy welcomed at the HOPE Cleft Center

Silay City, on the other hand, taught us that old partnerships never die; they just grow stronger with each passing year, but only if we nurture them.  Over time, our partners imbibe our values.  The more partners we take in, the wider our reach becomes.   For example, the HOPE Volunteers Foundation put up, on its own initiative, a cleft care center to provide speech therapy and psychosocial intervention for cleft children we have treated.  The program that these children prepared when we dropped by the center brought  lumps to our throat and tears to our eyes.  Seeing the progress they have made in reintegrating back to society is a sight you would commit to memory to be cherished and treasured forever. 

HOPE has been our partner for 23 years.   Under the leadership of Edith Villanueva, who also sits in the Board of Trustees of Operation Smile Philippines, Operation Smile has earned the continuing support of the provincial government and other local government units and the assistance of various charity and civic groups in the province. In gratitude for their support, we and our partner, Lifebox Foundation, donated 21 brand new pulse oximeters to the province’s hospitals. Lifebox also provided the hospitals’staff with training on the use and care of the equipment, which is critical in surgery.

After a day in Silay, we flew the next day to Cagayan de Oro City.  This mission site has presented us with a vexing challenge at the beginning.  We held a mini-mission in the city several years back, and, as Bill and Kathy had done in Naga 30 years ago, vowed to return to care for the children we weren’t able to treat then.  However, we had no existing partners there. Still, we thought we should go.  It’s the right and compassionate thing to do especially since the city’s spirit was still reeling from the floods that wrought severe destruction there.

When we made our intentions to hold a medical mission known, the city government quickly answered our call for assistance in organizing one.  A non-governmental organization, the Xavier Science Foundation, did too.  I am in Cagayan de Oro now with Bill and Kathy, and I tell you that the welcome we received upon our arrival was overwhelming, and the goodwill we created tremendous. The efficiency and enthusiasm of the student volunteers from Xavier Science Foundation are a joy to behold and proves once again that each and every one of us can make a contribution.

What we have learned here is that if you do a good deed, and make it known, others will come to join you.  A lot of people are just waiting for an opportunity to do good.

Communication is key to reaching these people.  And for this reason, we have to carefully craft our messages.  We must be able to make them see the big picture and the full impact of what we are doing and let them see their role in it.

The road to the starting line of The Journey Home has been long and difficult.  After all, it’s the biggest ever mission to be mounted in the Philippines.  The logistics needed to bring 14 tons of medical supplies and equipment and mobilize 1,000 volunteers from 36 countries and deploy them to nine sites across the country was mind-boggling.

But we have to do it. And it is now happening. The Journey Home is not only a journey to our past to but also a journey to our future.  It shows us that everything is within the realm of the possible if we put our minds to it and work together --- as a family who shares the same passion and genuinely cares for each other and for our fellowmen.

Travelling from site to site, Kathy and Bill Magee continue to reinvigorate both our medical and non-medical volunteers. Their message fans our passion and allows us to see the “Big Picture” of what Operation Smile is all about. As they say, we should never forget that it is the emotion and love in each of us which is eager to express itself to others. It is the passion for children that has brought us together in the first place and has driven and continues to drive Operation Smile to what is is today and what it will be tomorrow.

As an organization, we thrive on the realization that “a child is the only language we have in common.” And through medicine, which is a powerful vehicle, Operation Smile has the ability to unite nations and people, and to create change and transform lives across the globe.

Certainly, we could not have pulled this off without the commitment and wholehearted support of our trustees in Operation Smile Philippines, our volunteers from the Operation Smile global family, our counterparts in Operation Smile in Norfolk, our partners in the mission sites and thousands of others who we do not personally know but who just wanted to help out of the goodness of their heart and a burning desire make a difference in the lives of others.

We shall keep you posted about the progress of The Journey Home as this is as much your journey as ours.

For inquiries, contact:

Albert Santos                                                              
(02) 8119739                                                             
albert.santos@operationsmile.org.ph                    
    

Ricky Lepatan
(0917) 811 9807 
rylepatan@yahoo.com