Who we are

1. Set up treatment centers among local communities and towns. 
2. Empower local medical professional to identify and counsel the cleft persons & their parent in their localities.  
3. To promote sustainable and scalable good health care for the cleft persons and other Oro-facial deformities. 
4. To advocate policy formulation against societal stigmatization of the cleft child and persons. 
5. Research to provide baseline data on the state of Oro-facial deformities in Africa. 
6. To create awareness about cleft and Oro-facial deformities through public health information and sensitization initiative. 
7. Formation of community participation centres.  
8. Organization of lectures, seminars, workshops, conference formal and informal talks on the prevention and treatment availability of the cleft and other birth defect. 

Good Smile Africa Advocacy Initiative is a Non-Governmental organization that offers free Cleft lip and palate surgeries to individuals born with such congenital deformities with the aim of putting smiles on them and their parents and thus help to abort/minimize the sociocultural inequalities such people go through because of the misconception that the condition is of evil spirit. 

The cleft lip and palate individuals   

These are individuals born with an Oro-facial deformities in the form of a gap, opening or slit between the lip that could extend to the roof of the mouth called palate. Occasionally, the other parts of the face like the nose, eyelid and the angle of the mouth could be involve [Tessier cleft] and when other parts of the body like the heart, brain etc. are involves, it is called syndromic cleft. It occurs early in pregnancy when the face and upper lips develop during the 5th – 9th week of pregnancy. 

Associated causes have been attributed to poor nutrition of mother including prenatal vitamins and folic acid deficiency, high in-take of alcohol and drugs during pregnancy, late maternal age [40 years and above] and family history of cleft resulting in genetic hereditary factors.  

About 1 in 700-800 births are affected by cleft lip and palate out of which 6,348 babies born with cleft in Nigeria as reported by World Health Organization. The physical outcome of cleft is a monster looking appearance with severe psyco-social stress on their parents. Cleft make the sufferer find it difficult to eat, speak, breath and failure to thrive. Such children are said to be of evil-spirit in origin and their parent are assumed to have sinned against gods of the land in some societies and thus haven a cleft baby is associated with bad luck and negative omens. 

Such extreme misconception causes some parents to either abandon their new born or kill them. 

The cleft child and parent suffered stigmatization, discrimination, sociocultural in-equities, rejection, bullied and isolation by neighbors. Such myths and community scorn results in improper up bring of the child, low self-esteem, high school drop-out. Eventually, they are not able to become productive members of the society who have acquired a skills and education. 

Surgical treatment of these individual drastically improve their lives and thus able to eat, breath, speak and ultimately thrive. Subsequently, GSA is asking for partnership and collaboration with well-meaning individuals, co-operate organization and government in the prevention, treatment & care of the cleft persons in order to bring good smiles to them and their parents at no cost to cleft persons or their families even as most sufferer cannot access or afford the cost of treatments. 

1. Medical and surgical treatment of the cleft / birth defect persons. 
2. Advocacy against stigmatization of the cleft / birth defect persons. 
3. Periodic outreach activities to communities, school and the social media. 
4. Connecting the donors to the needy in bring treatment services closer to the cleft persons. 
5. Research work on case and prevention of cleft / birth defect persons. 
6. Consultancy service in Oro-facial birth defect issues.