This report originally appeared in the December 2010 issue of DOTmed Business News

The Venezuelan woman spent more than half a century with a cleft palate. When she arrived at the country's Operation Smile site, Dr. Ruben Ayala, then a mission coordinator with the organization, couldn't help but wonder why the woman felt the need to get the surgery after 60 plus years.

"'I just want to be like any other woman, feel pretty and be able to wear lipstick,'" Ayala recalls the woman saying.

After the surgery, the female volunteers at the site pooled their beauty products together as a parting gift for the woman with a new smile.

"I think she has enough cosmetics to last a lifetime," jokes Ayala.

As someone who has moved through the ranks of Operation Smile, Ayala, now a medical officer, has accumulated a collection of cases showing the conversion through charitable surgery of misery into joy.

Ayala first encountered Operation Smile as a 17-year-old boy in Panama. One morning, he walked into a local hospital to serve as a translator for the American surgeons who were there to perform cleft procedures. He found himself surrounded by hundreds of children with cleft lips and palates, a powerful experience that led him to question the intentions of Panamanian physicians.

"I was very, very upset about seeing so many children who had not received any care. I judged my countrymen very harshly. I wondered what our physicians were doing and why these kids weren't being taken care of," he says.

Through scholarships, Ayala was able to attend college in the United States but ended up returning to Panama to serve as a translator for Operation Smile. As he walked out of the OR one day, the organization's staff leader asked him to join the team.

"It took me a microsecond to decide," he says. "It was certainly one of the happiest times in my life."

By the time Ayala was 22, his faith in Panamanian physicians was restored: he witnessed the first surgical mission carried out by local medical professionals. It was a moment of "incredible joy" for Ayala, a realized dream capturing the philosophy of Operation Smile - establishing local sustainability.

Restoring smiles
Operation Smile was born in 1982 when Dr. William Magee, then a young plastic surgeon, traveled to the Philippines with his wife to repair children's cleft lips and palates. When it was time to leave, hundreds of children still needed help. The dedication to the work stuck when the couple returned to the U.S. and today, Operation Smile has a presence in more than 60 nations and works in more than 30 countries worldwide.

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