Selfless: Dr Hirji Adenwalla

He has got to be one of the most amazing man I've ever heard of. I want to be just like this. Surgeries free of charge and getting money from giving speeches!

Smile Train Partner Spotlight

A Man On A Mission: Decades Of Helping Children Who Have No Place Else To Turn.

The Webster's Dictionary definition of "selfless" — "without regard for one's own interests" — is certainly clear and concise. Should the dictionary ever desire an alternate definition, however, it might want to consider three words: "Doctor Hirji Adenwalla."

To know Dr. Adenwalla is to understand that no one, anywhere, is more emblematic of the word "selfless." What better way to describe a unique man who, as head of the Charles Pinto Centre for Cleft Lip and Palate in Kerala, India for the more than 40 years, has devoted his considerable skills to improving — some might say "salvaging" — the lives of more than 7,000 underprivileged children by giving them the life-transforming ability to smile. Equally remarkable, Dr. Adenwalla has performed every one of these surgeries himself, free of charge, on a budget historically so modest that much of it has resulted from speaking fees. He typically spends his annual vacation making speeches to social service organizations in order to raise funds for the Centre.

Since 2001, the first year that The Smile Train was privileged to provide the Charles Pinto Centre with funding, Dr. Adenwalla has performed cleft lip and palate repair on more than 2,000 children who would otherwise have never received it.

"With the help of The Smile Train, we're able to reach out to many more children and change many more lives." says Dr Adenwalla. "I am very excited about what the future holds for this partnership."

A longtime professional associate described the Charles Pinto Centre's work as "truly remarkable,"and Dr. Adenwalla as "a legendary surgeon who has touched thousands of lives with his heart, his head and his hands. A very rare combination of huge talent and tiny ego."

Dr. Adenwalla himself, of course, dismisses such praise and deflects all compliments. But he reveals at least a part of what motivates him in a speech he made recently at a Smile Train Celebration of 100,000 Smiles, "The lessons that we learn from human misery are to love�To never forget and to never, never look away."