2008-2009 Synopsis

This was an exceptional year for our teams. The facilities worked well, the mission volunteers from both the USA and Belize were dedicated. We had electricity, water, and even the weather cooperated.

Project Smile volunteers saw students from several different schools. We paid for busses to bring them to our central location at St. Mary’s School where we have our permanent 7-chair clinic.

Using typical fees of a private dental office in the Southeast US for comparison, the results of Project Smile for the 2008/2009 season are:

4 Mission trips, 5 Teams

The first student dental hygiene volunteer group experience was exceptional. Senior dental hygiene students from Armstrong Atlantic State University earned semester credits for a foreign study program. This student program will surely become a yearly integral part of the Project Smile mission.

A new clinic installed in November 2008 in the western mountains of Belize brought in a new patient population of Mayan children. Virginia volunteers already plan two weeks of clinic time in March 2010.

The main clinic in Belize City continues to serve children from eight schools.

Project Smile now is helping the Catholic Diocese of South Carolina start a similar preventive program in Honduras and another faith-based program in the mountains of Guatemala.

Project Smile upgraded equipment and visited a site on Ambergris Caye offshore, where there is a new Anglican school with over 500 children and no dental care. These children are the most impoverished and have the lowest body weight and height of any population group in the entire country of Belize. In 2007 the school started providing hot lunches. Medicine was distributed to cure disease from intestinal parasites (100% of children were infected); the children have gained weight and now are in of need dental care. This is a possible area to serve in the future.