Adahara knew she was lucky to receive all the cleft treatment she needed from an early age. She's training to become a Smile Train partner because she knows not every child with a cleft is so lucky.
Thanks to Dr. Cuadros — and Smile Train — having a cleft on the Navajo reservations of New Mexico is no longer a sentence to a life of isolation and sickness.
Ayubu's classmates harassed him relentlessly for years because of a local myth about clefts. When he was 10 years old, his mother heard there was hope at a hospital less than an hour away.
Kamse was excited for his first day of school, but, when the day finally came, he was taunted all day long. Kamse ran home and begged his grandfather never to make him go back.