Khalisa: Love Overcomes Fear

Clefts are never only about the child. They affect the entire family.
Khalisa holding a picture of herself before cleft surgery

When the attending nurses handed Khalisa over to her father, he panicked and asked for them to take her away to the nursery before his wife, Ruri, saw her cleft – he thought it would be too upsetting after a stressful birth.

Ruri asked for her baby for two long, confusing days. Finally, her husband and the hospital staff handed her over. They had been right – she was terrified.
Khalisa was so fragile that Ruri feared she would suffocate or choke at every meal.

But at least at the hospital they had help. Once home, the family was left to deal with their struggles alone.

Everywhere they went, they were harassed with cruel rumors and insults. Their older daughter was bullied so relentlessly in school for the way her sister looked that she begged her parents to be allowed to stay home. Her grades fell off a cliff.

Khalisa playing at home
Khalisa playing at home

Yet the family refused to give up. They scoured the internet and social media for any information they could find on clefts and cleft treatment, and that’s how Ruri met another mother whose baby had also been born with a cleft.

The mother invited Ruri to join a WhatsApp group for cleft-affected families in their part of Indonesia, where she met their local Smile Train social worker.

Ruri and Khalisa
Ruri holding Khalisa

A few weeks later, Khalisa was scheduled for the free cleft surgery that would change her life — and her family’s lives — forever at a nearby Smile Train partner hospital.

Khalisa and her mother
Ruri and Khalisa. Khalisa is holding a picture of herself before cleft surgery

“I am very grateful to Smile Train Indonesia for helping Khalisa get her new smile,” Ruri said.

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Our Impact in Indonesia

as of May 2022

100,000+

cleft surgeries sponsored since 2002

215+

active partner surgeons

205+

active partner hospitals