500, 000th

I just love getting emails from them.

Hi,

16 days left in the year. And what a year it has been.

Winning an Oscar for our film Smile Pinki in February was huge. Celebrating our 10^th year anniversary was great.

But by far the best thing we did this year… was operate on our 500,000^th child in March.

No other organization - non-profit or for-profit - in the world has ever changed so many lives through surgery in such a short period of time.

And we could never have done it without your help.

500,000 is an almost impossible number of children to comprehend or appreciate or even visualize.

But think of it this way.

If all the boys and girls we have operated on stood on each other’s shoulders, they would stand higher than the Empire State building.

(Higher than 160 Empire State buildings to be exact!)

If all the children we have helped held hands in a line, that line of boys and girls would be 40 miles long.

If they all picked up the phone and called you at your home to say, “Thank you for changing my life,” and each call took just 3 minutes, it would take you more than 4 years to speak to all of these kids. (That’s assuming you answered the phone every 3 minutes and you didn’t sleep or eat.)

It‘s fun figuring all the different ways to visualize 500,000 happy smiling kids.

What is not so fun is to visualize all the children we haven’t helped.

Yes, believe it or not, 40 miles of children smiling and holding hands is not enough!

On behalf of all 42 employees here at The Smile Train, (17 of which are on the front lines in developing countries and working out of their homes) I thank you for your support and I wish you and your family a very happy and healthy New Year.

Thanks for helping us change the world one smile at a time,

Brian
Co-Founder/President

P.S. If you have any suggestions or comments or criticisms, please feel free to email me back directly. I actually do read your emails and appreciate you taking the time to let us know what we are doing right and wrong.