Medical Mission

How We Work - The Medical Mission

Our surgical mission represents the pivotal and most important event of the humanitarian action of Emergenza Sorrisi. The choice of country to take a mission to is made by the Scientific Committee, chaired by Dr Fabio Massimo Abenavoli – a plastic surgeon, who takes into consideration a series of technical and logistic aspects:

The amount of the children suffering from labio-palatoplasty, burns or other poorly-treated conditions.
The health structure that will host the mission.
The partnership with the local Health Ministry and the institutions.
The beginning of a collaboration with local doctors and nurses.

Selecting a country for an Emergenza Sorrisi mission is made on the grounds of a request from the local Health Ministry, requesting assistance to have surgery for the many children born with major facial malformations who have not yet received suitable care.

Prior to surgical missions, an assessment is carried out at the hosting hospital, of the local logistical and health environment, quantity of equipment, and drugs necessary for surgery.

The mission lasts about 10/12 days, in which up to 100/150 children can undergo surgery, according to the infrastructures available in Hospitals and the tables we can organise for the Italian teams of doctor.

The team is usually formed by a maxillofacial surgeon or a plastic surgeon, a paediatrician a neonatologist, an anaesthetist-resuscitator, a nurse and a logistical expert.

During the mission there's an initial screening phase, in which hundreds of children coming to the hospital are met with. In the days before the mission, our local collaborators spread news of our visit on TV, via the media and panels, so that parents of children with a cleft lip take their children to the visits and are perhaps included in planned surgery for the following days.

Loss items in a sample mission

24% - Travel of voluntary health staff 20% - Full board of health staff 39% - Pharmaceutical and equipment cargo from Italy 2% - Refund of expenses from local collaborators 6% - Educational material to train local doctors 7% - Administrative expenses 2% - Local transport.

Immediately after assessing the health of children who must undergo surgery, operations begin. The objective of the team of doctors is to maximise the number of children to be operated on, maintaining high standards of treatment.

During each one of the steps above, the local medical and nursing staff actively participate in every activity, shadowing our staff and acquiring the necessary skills to work autonomously.

Strategic Plan 2020 – 2023

Emergenza Sorrisi has a clear and concrete objective for the three year period 2017 / 2020: it’s going to impact the number of children with severe facial malformations, consequences of burns, war trauma, neoplasms, opthalmic and paediatric pathology, by carrying out missions and surgical interventions, facilitating social inclusion and re-integration, in the method and numbers as follows, making:

5,721

children Treated

20,000

Families Supported

700

Medical Staff Trained

114

Misisons

The ambitious Project that Emergency Smiles wants to carry out in the next 5 years is to expand its activity in different countries through the work of surgeons, pediatricians anesthesiologists and nurses of different specializations, create additional reference centres for local populations and create information campaigns and prevention of birth defects

We therefore plan to carry out 8 missions a year operating approximately 400 patients.
We plan to carry out 2 information campaigns and prevent the year going to reach families the schools of aggregation. Our experience in this field gives us an estimated population of 50,000 per year

Other objectives

Improve the level of accountability.
Strengthen the relations between donors and stakeholders.
Strengthen, refine and increase the collection of funds and strategies of partnership.
Strengthen the contribution of volunteers in our missions.
Improve the brand awareness of Emergenza Sorrisi.

The 6 objectives for the next five years in the area of external relationships

Development of the strategies of national and international networking to increase our impact.
Start up a program of monitoring and analysis of our missions.
Strengthen our accountability and responsibility.
Guarantee long term support for our actions and structure.
Operate according to an approach that is always and greatly cost-effective.
Obtain funds and an effective strategy with the objective of keeping costs down.
Raising brand awereness.
Start of the partnership to enable planning of long-term actions.

Relationships with supporters

The donor – either an individual, company, or foundation – is at the centre of our action and interest, thus becoming a crucial partner in surgical missions.

The relationship with donors follows the criteria of:

Transparency.
Ethics.
Reporting .
Information.
Accessibility to information.

Emergenza Sorrisi is the first Italian organisation that codifies and institutionalizes relationships with its own supporters, guaranteeing them the greatest transparency, ethics, and correctness, by adopting and taking inspiration from the code of ethics from an international perspective, The Donor bill of Rights – The Charter of Rights for the donor.

Every donor is at the centre of our interests. The donor – who chooses to donate to Emergenza Sorrisi – should be, and must:

Be informed about the mission of the organization, and the way in which the organization intends to utilize its resources.
Be sure that the information on their own donation is treated respectfully, and with the greatest level of confidentiality, in accordance with the regulations in force.
Be informed about the identity of those who serve at the administration council of the organization, and guarantee every measure aiming for a correct administration of the entity.
Can have access to recent balance sheets.
Have the possibility that their name is treated confidentially, and will be respected in communication avoiding the phenomenon known as “boosting information”.
Feel free to pose questions at the moment in which a donation is made, and receive a timely communication.

Donations

The principles that regulate our funds’ collection are:

To give the possibility to everybody – through Emergenza Sorrisi – to make a difference to the lives of children, by means of donations.
To choose the best for children in accordance with the norms of ethics and social value.
To generate entrance from each area of fund collection, thus guaranteeing a future support and a perfect funding mix.
To strengthen the activity of communication aiming to transmit the values of Emergenza Sorrisi in a more respectful manner to our donors.
Fund collection as an instrument of brand and awareness-raising, by means of which the donor or potential donor will be informed about the problem that we’re going to deal with.

Fund collection doesn’t represent just a strategy for obtaining funds, but a methodological activity, it continues and supports information and awareness of our job and the problem that we’re going to solve using donations.

Collection of funds from companies

Companies are and could be close to Emergenza Sorrisi and support our medical missions with one donation, and/or funding one part or the total costs for a specific initiative, or more medical missions.

The company can choose among various methods of donation:

1) Supporting an entire surgical mission

How much does a surgical mission cost?

Not all missions are similar, the costs for organization of a mission vary according to the situation of the country referred to, to agreements with local partners, and the number of voluntary doctors involved.

On average, necessary costs for the organization of a mission, are referred to the following items of expense:

Instruments, drugs and available materials.
Reimbursement of local collaborators.
Airline tickets for the team of voluntary doctors and nurses.
Production of hard copy audiovisual teaching materials for the training of local doctors.
Board and lodgings for volunteers during the days of their stay on site.
Insurance and administrative expenses.

2) Development of partnerships

Companies can support the activities of Emergenza Sorrisi in a structured and sustainable way, through the development of collaborative programs based on all marketing activities undertaken by a company, and supported by the community.

Programs of Cause-Related Marketing: the donation of the company is subject to the sale of a specific product or service, utilized to promote the partnership.
Activity of Joint Fund-Raising: the company plays an intermediary role promoting the collection of funds in favour of Emergenza Sorrisi among its own clientele.
Collection of points: a threshold of points is fixed, achievement of that makes the client request an award, choosing to support Emergenza Sorrisi, the points convert to a company donation according to the scheme of conversion fixed and promoted through the catalogue.
Regular donation: the company is committed to regularly financing the medical missions of Emergenza Sorrisi.
We prepare in collaboration with the company a communication plan for the promotion of the program.
We guarantee visibility of the company through our website, our social networks, our hard copy and electronic newsletter.
We report the mission providing a detailed description of objectives achieved at the end of the activity.
We assist the company to benefitting from relevant tax relief.

Fundraising from Foundations, Organizations and Institutions

“Emergenza Sorrisi” proactively appreciates, along with funding organizations and national as well as international grant-makers, the commitment, amount, and purposes of donations.
Objectives and strategies that will be pursued are:

Developing clear and transparent relationships in terms of sustainability.
Structuring strategic plans and long-term objectives.
Proactive choice of the best opportunities at national as well as international levels.
Paying attention to the protection of “Emergenza Sorrisi”’s values and missions.
Developing and favouring long term relationships.

The volunteer’s value - Emergenza Sorrisi’s true wealth

Every single person joining our missions – volunteers, doctors, journalists and medical staff – represents human capital for us, which allows us to change lives, hundreds and thousands of lives.

During the last three years 2014/2016, about 133 volunteers have joined our surgical missions.