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The Children of Sumatra was set up with the aim of helping children suffering from cleft lip and palate living on the island of Sumatra, Indonesia. Many families there are too poor to pay for a simple operation that can transform their child’s future.
In Europe and America we are almost unaware of this condition because the correction of cleft lip and palate is a routine operation carried out in the first year of a child’s life. If left untreated it can have a disastrous effect on a child, making both education and social acceptance very difficult.
Celebrating 100 Smiles
In October 2007 theChildren of Sumatracelebrated the successfull operation of its 100th child! We have come a long way since the first operation in 2002. 51 out of the 100 children we have helped so far were operated on in 2007.
Give the gift of a smile today. Join our 100 Smiles for Christmas Appeal, launched last Christmas, to help raise £12,000 for the next 100 smiles by Christmas 2008. So far we have raised a wonderful £2640.00, making 22 smiles possible. It is a great start but we need your help to go further and be able to offer operations to all the children on our growing waiting list..
News update from Sumatra...April 2008 We were very lucky to receive a donation of a small mini bus from Oxfam earlier this year. This allows us to reach children from more isolated villages around Aceh and Sumatra as well as enabling us to visit the operated children more frequently to fulfill their essential aftercare needs. This April we will start operating on children every month and will carry on through to September when a team of Dutch doctors come over to Indonesia to help with some of the more difficult cases. Our waiting list is growing every day - the more villages we reach the more children we find in need. 1 in 300 children are born with this disability in Sumatra so The Children of Sumatra are in great need of funding to be able to carry on helping the huge amount of children that are born with this condition every year. It is so important to get these children to qualified surgeons who can give them good operations. Many children have operations that have been carried out by unskilled doctors and the results can be awful. I would like to thank everyone for all their support and apologies for not being in touch as often as I would like. Katie Pavett, Children of Sumatra |
Bobby was one of the 1st children we helped. See his story here...
More information on our cleft lip and palate work
Asian tsunami relief
When the Asian Tsunami struck on 26th December 2004 we extended our work to be able to respond quickly to the needs of the people of northern Sumatra, the worst hit area.
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UN tents arriving and a mobile clinic operating in a refugee camp on Sabang
Our local knowledge helped us co-ordinate the work of the major charities and arrange distribution of supplies.
After completing many reliefandre-building projects, including arranging for over 100 operations, we are now focussing once again on our original cleft lip and palate work. However, we are still helping people who have lasting difficulties from the tsunami, particularly the orphans.
For more information on our work with tsunami orphansclick here
For more information on our tsunami relief workclick here
Location of our work
Sumatra is the sixth largest island in the world, and the third largest in the Indonesian archipelago. Lying between the Indian Ocean and the peninsula of Malaysia and Singapore, Sumatra sits parallel the fault line, which runs up the west coast. This is where two tectonic plates meet, and it was movement caused by the immense build up of pressure along this fault line that resulted in the tsunami in December 2004. Worst hit was the northern tip of Sumatra, particularly Aceh province.
The work of The Children of Sumatra is within Aceh province, mainly on the island of Pulau Weh (also known as Sabang) in Medan, the capital of Sumatra and in the area around Lake Toba.
