"Knowing the strong emotions I felt when Ethan was born, it was hard to imagine how a family with no access to life-saving surgery would feel. I wanted to help."
Wendy was 17, single, and scared. She had just had a baby with a cleft, and any help seemed far, far away from her family's ranch in the remote Andes highlands. But Smile Train was there.
When Dr. Dau started as a Smile Train partner, he knew children with clefts were often abandoned or put in orphanages. As an orphan himself, he comes to work each day determined that no other child should experience that pain.
A stranger pointed Natsir to the Smile Train partner hospital that saved his sons' lives. He has devoted his life since to paying the kindness forward to help other families in need.