Smile Train

Smile Train is the world’s largest cleft charity. In developing countries there are millions of children who are suffering with unrepaired clefts. Most cannot eat or speak properly. They aren’t allowed to attend school or hold a job and face difficult lives of shame and isolation. These images tell the story of an abandoned child who was adopted by a poor family in rural China.  They traveled to one of Smile Train's partner hospitals where surgeons repaired the child's cleft and changed his life.

Photographs by Mark Edward Atkinson, Kathleen Hennessy and Barbara Ries.