Service Learning: Smiles all around

Last week 9 STA senior students travelled to Mae Sot to take part in the Operation Smile mission.

St Andrews International School Bangkok has a long tradition of taking part in the Operation Smile missions in Northern Thailand and last week 9 Year 12 and 13 students travelled to Mae Sot for this year’s mission. Operation Smile is an organisation who provide surgeries for children who have cleft lips  and palates. On this mission our students visited the hospital where the operations were taking place. They spent some time on the wards meeting the children who were scheduled to have surgery while we were there.  During the ward visit toys were given to the children and some respite was offered to the parents as their children played with all the student volunteers there on the day.

While we were in the hospital we were given the opportunity to observe an operation take place. This was both an interesting and emotional experience for a number of students as the patient they were observing was one of the children they had been playing with the previous day. Next year we hope to take part in another Operation Smile mission but before them our High School club will organise some events to raise awareness for this organisation in our school community.