help us to make more smiles come true

News update 2023

Hello again, friends – it’s been a while, but we’re back with an update and some positive news. But before we get stuck into all that, we’d like to start with an apology. It’s been far too long since we’ve reached out with an update. The last three years have been tough for most of...

About Us

Our simple vision is to change the quality of life for children with cleft deformities. Our mission is to find children in desperate need of surgery and to provide much needed help.

In 2001, The Children of Sumatra was set up with the simple vision of helping the vast number of children who suffer from cleft lip and palate deformities living on the island of Sumatra, Indonesia. Since then, our charity has been providing plastic surgery, dentistry, financial support and medical care for cleft suffering children across Sumatra to develop a better quality of life for children with this deformity.

Many families in this area of the world are too poor to pay for a simple operation that can transform their child’s future. In Europe and America, we have become quite unaware of this condition as it is corrected within the first year of a child’s life, often leaving behind no trace. However in Indonesia this is not the case and the condition currently affects as many as 1 in every 500 children. Our mission has taken our team into some of the most remote jungles, mountains and isolated islands in and around Sumatra, where transport and simple infrastructure is immensely lacking. We have also funded operations and long term aftercare for some of Indonesia’s poorest urban children, several of whom have been abandoned by families and others left orphaned by a multitude of tragic circumstances.