As Service activities resumed in the semester, I joined the Cleft Palate service, a service group dedicated to helping kids that suffer from cleft lips. I joined the service group because I felt it was a noble cause and I heard that the group had troubles being considered a legitimate service activity as they were not interacting with kids with cleft lips. However they were getting new leaders and I wanted to do my best to help them as a member of the group.
After speaking with the Community and Service coordinator, Cleft Palate got a couple of ideas of how they could improve. The coordinator basically wanted us to branch out from primarily raising funds and Cleft Palate started to do that
On the 24th of February we had a girl come in who was born with a cleft lip. She had had all her operations but still had troubles with her speech and basically told us about her experiences. We then got to ask her some questions about what life had been like for her etc.
Our leaders also went to the hospital where the kids we had provided with funds had their cleft lip correction surgeries. They took a lot of before and after photos and put together a video that they plan to show at assembly. The service group also received more good news as we managed to pencil in a date for a doctor to come to OSC and speak to them about cleft lip correction surgery and the beneficial work our service group has done. On the day he comes in we plan to give him a check for around Rs. 225,000
As of now most of our attention is focused on the party we have planned for the 22nd of April, our primary means of raising funds. Our goal is to raise Rs. 75,000 so that we would have raised Rs. 300,000 in total for the year.
My experiences with Cleft Palate have helped me consider the ethical implications of our actions. Cleft Palate was too focused on fund raising and this narrow approach took away from the human aspect of our activity. By finally starting to interact with a community of people involved with the condition, Cleft Palate began to branch out and become a more legitimate service activity. Below is a video the leaders constructed of the before and after pictures of kids our money helped correct.
