Dear Give Kids a Smile Volunteers and Participants,
The essence of our annual Give Kids A Smile Day is to help ensure that every child has a healthy and radiant smile. Thanks to our volunteers, donors and supporters, we held an extremely successful Give Kids A Smile event on Saturday Feb, 24, 2018.
Children from Northern VA received dental screenings and enjoyed dental-related arts and crafts, learned how to brush teeth by using puppets, receiving speech and learning tests, and more. We may even have inspired some children to become dentists!
While Give Kids A Smile Day won’t solve the local or national issue of access-to-care, it does draw attention to the struggle that many families face to obtain basic dental care. It is shocking that dental decay remains the single most common chronic childhood disease, with nearly one in four children under five already having cavities. According to a CDC report, “For children, untreated cavities can cause pain, dysfunction, school absences, difficulty concentrating, and poor appearance—problems that greatly affect a child’s quality of life and ability to succeed.” Without relief, these children could face lifelong health problems – not just dental health, but overall health.
With that in mind, we were able to make Give Kids A Smile Day 2018 a wonderful collaborative event for our local community. Because of you and your selfless donation of time and resources, so many children were helped. Almost $15,000 worth of treatment was provided by the team of dentists, dental professionals and speech pathologists that participated.
So for this, I want to say a very sincere thank you for all your hard work- we couldn’t have done it without you!
More pictures from the event can be found HERE.
See you next year, February 23rd, 2019!
Much love,
Dr. Rishita Jaju, DMD
Smile Wonders