Smile Mission

Smile Mission is an Italian Association of volunteers, whose aim is supplying dental and medical care to anyone in need of help. Its denomination in full is Associazione Smile Mission Solidarietà Odontoiatrica Internazionale - ONLUS. Smile Mission is seated in via Giuseppe Zorzi 7, in Verona, the city in which it was founded 29 June 2005.

Purpose

The Association, strictly no-profit, pursues social solidarity, especially in the range of health services, through interventions supporting sanitary activity of prevention, care, bodily and psychical recovery towards needy people, in Italy and abroad.[1][2]

Smile Mission was founded on the initiative of some members, the greater part of them performing dentistry. Nowadays the Association still operates mainly in the sphere of dentistry, though it keeps some missions going in others medical specialities, too.[3] Among a good deal of projects active or accomplished, can be mentioned the mission in Nzihi, Tanzania, going on in accordance with local Ministry of Health, (example of an activity drawing towards an administration fully undertaken by local government); as well as the dentist's surgery boat cruising along the Madeira River, in Brazil.

Sphere of action

Association's activities, carried out gratis by members, are:

  • Help, prevention and sanitary education (medical and dental) to disadvantaged people;
  • To organize expedition of volunteers to seat of projects' accomplishment: physicians, dentists, dental mechanics, oral hygiene's diplomaeds, assistants, etc.;
  • Economic support to development programs, self-government, performed by local communities, in the range of medical and dental assistance;
  • Didactic activity,[4] dental and medical, for its own members, people benefited by projects, and local operators.

All activities are accomplished respecting social and cultural situations of the countries where the association is working, avoiding to impose forms religious, ideological, of organization, technological not shared by involved people.

Nations in which projects are active

Smile Mission has in course projects[5] in Italy; Tanzania; Democratic Republic of the Congo; Malawi; Brazil; Madagascar;.[6] New projects are developing in Rwanda, in joint venture with another Association, Komera Rwanda, and in Burkina Faso. Former projects, now closed, operated in India, Albania, Bosnia.

Notes
  1. Missione Sorriso ai cinque angoli della Terra (Smile Mission at earth's five corners), in Odontoiatria, Rivista degli Amici di Brugg, N°4, a.XXVII, Marzo 2009, pag.349-353
  2. Odontoiatria essenziale per lo sviluppo della salute orale nel mondo, in Giornale dell' Odontoiatra, n°7, 30 Aprile 2010, page 30
  3. Punti di contatto - Rivista di Volontariato, N°2, Maggio 2009
  4. IV Convegno di Odontoiatria Essenziale, in: Italian Dental Journal IV - 2010, page 24
  5. Bollettino Ordine dei Medici di Venezia (Venice Medical Association's Bulletin) N°4/2009, September 30th, 2009: pages 22-23
  6. Formare dentisti e odontotecnici in paesi in via di sviluppo - Il Giornale della Previdenza dei Medici e degli Odontoiatri, Year XVII, N° 6-2012, pages 75-76
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