Unlike many charities that do many different things, The Smile Train is focused on solving a single problem: cleft lip and palate. Clefts are a major problem in developing countries where there are millions of children who are suffering with unrepaired clefts. Most cannot eat or speak properly. Aren’t allowed to attend school or hold a job. And face very difficult lives filled with shame and isolation, pain and heartache.

The good news is that every single child with a cleft can be helped with surgery that costs as little as $250 and takes as little as 45 minutes.

The Smile Train's mission is:
    -To provide free cleft surgery for millions of poor children in developing countries.
    -To provide free cleft-related training for doctors and medical professionals.
Until there are no more children who need help and we have completely eradicated the problem of clefts.

 

With our €2,000 donation, we financed surgery and the chance for a normal and healthy life for 12 children like these from around the world.

    

  

   

 

 

 

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International Community School Music Program

With proceeds of its June 2006 concerts, Voices International donated $2,200 to the International Community School in Decatur, Georgia, USA. Our former and founding musical director, Peggy Jenks, transferred to this school over the summer and is teaching music to refugee children.  There are 19 students in the 5th & 6th Grades from Afghanistan, Kurdistan, Burma, Congo, Iraq, U.S., Mexico, and possibly other countries who are studying "beginning instruments". Through donations either of money or of instruments, they each have an instrument to play. They now have music stands, necessary accessories like oil, grease, reeds, straps, music, and a few African drums. This is a difficult challenge for Peggy, as many of the students have learning and behavioral issues as well as English-speaking and writing issues. Peggy tells us that the staff of the school are amazingly talented and very committed to teaching these children.  

We have received the grateful thanks from not only Peggy, but from the school's administration, for our donation. Peggy feels that learning an instrument will give these students something very special in their lives. They unfortunately live in very unsafe apartment complexes with drugs, gangs, and guns out in the open. The International Community School is trying to create a safe place emotionally and physically for these special students.

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With the proceeds of our Christmas 2005 concerts we will make a donation to provide relief to “Street Children” in Kabul, Afghanistan.  In particular, our donation will contribute toward keeping these kids warm and properly nourished during what is predicted to be an even colder than usual Afghan winter. We are very fortunate to have made direct contact with an American on the ground in Kabul who is personally coordinating relief efforts, so we can provide the funds knowing that they will be put to good use immediately, without the risk of bureaucratic intervention slowing down the process.

helps children in Sao Paolo, by taking them off the Street and providing them a place to live. ABBA then enrols them in a school and teaches them the basic social rules and discipline. Finally ABBA puts them back into contact with their families.

Next we contributed to Proyeto Salesiano, the Ecuadorian Street Children's Project, which helps to keep underprivileged children off the streets and in school.

In 2003 Voices International donated €2000 to Les Amis de l'Inde, which has, among other notable projects, helped to establish and maintain the "KIRAN" Village, a centre in India for children who are either physically handicapped or financially underprivileged

Initially Voices International supported The China Project to build schools in underdeveloped regions of China. Voices International donated to this project until it was complete.