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Grant Programs

Smile Train funds hundreds of partners and programs throughout the world that help poor children receive treatment they could otherwise never afford.

Smile Train partners in scrubs

Grant Types

Becoming A Partner

All of our partners are united by a common goal: helping children who have no place else to turn. If this is your goal, we'd like to partner with you. Contact us at partner@smiletrain.org for more information.

Comprehensive Treatment Grants

Smile Train’s vision is to ensure every child with a cleft can lead a full and productive life. Essential services such as nutrition, speech therapy, dental and orthodontic treatments are often required throughout a child's lifetime.

Education And Training Grants

A key to Smile Train’s model of empowering local medical professionals is our commitment to education and training. Our funding ensures that doctors in even the most low-resource settings have access to first-rate educational opportunities, helping to improve the proficiency, safety, and quality of care provided.

Equipment Grants

Safety and quality are paramount to Smile Train. Equipment Grants provide funding for everything from cleft sets to pulse oximeters to vans that help transport patients or help medical professional expand their reach. These grants allow recipients to at once improve the quality of their care and increase the number of children they can help.

Patient Logistics Grants

This program targets patients whose families could never make it to the hospital for treatment without additional financial support for expenses such as the cost of transportation to and from the hospital and food and shelter once there.

Outreach Grants

While local empowerment is at Smile Train’s core, there are high-need areas where no qualified treatment teams exist. In places like these, we provide support to ensure medical professionals can reach these patients and build the capacity of local providers.

Awareness Grants

These grants support campaigns to educate people about clefts and their treatment, reducing stigma and ensuring patients in need can reach our partner hospitals.

Treatment Partnerships

Smile Train provides financial support and training for local healthcare workers around the world to treat children in need with clefts in their own communities, empowering patients, families, regional health systems, and medical providers alike.

Our Funding Principles

We Do:

  • Focus exclusively on programs related to cleft lip and palate.
  • Focus on the poorest countries with the highest incidence of clefts.
  • Support programs that provide free treatment for poor children.
  • Support doctors and hospitals that need financial assistance.
  • Leverage our support by cost-sharing with our partners.
  • Foster self-sufficiency in our partners.
  • Closely monitor and manage all of our programs and partners.
  • Require all of our partners to adhere to the highest standards of safety and quality.

We Don't:

  • Pay for treatment for children whose families can afford it.
  •  Replace funding, or pay for surgeries that other organizations will pay for (government, insurance, charities, etc.).
  •  Support organizations that do not provide safe and high-quality treatment.