Lions players bring smiles to children

Greenstone resident and Emirates Lions player Courtnal Skosan, together with his teammates, recently visited the children at the Charlotte Maxeke Johannesburg Academic Hospital.

The players saw first-hand, the difference the Tries for Smiles campaign is making in the lives of South African children.

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Every three minutes, a child is born with a cleft palate or cleft lip.

That’s almost 27 children during your average Vodacom Super Rugby match. This season, however, every South African team is doing something to ensure that these 27 children per match get the care they need. Every South African player sees a smile at the end of every try line. And they’re doing their best to make more children smile.

The 2018 Vodacom Tries for Smiles campaign will see the Vodacom Foundation donate R3 000 to The Smile Foundation for every try scored by a South African team in this year’s Vodacom Super Rugby competition. The funds raised through Tries for Smiles help the Smile Foundation to support children in need of reconstructive surgery. To date, the Smile Foundation has assisted over 2 500 children.

Perhaps an even greater reward, for both players and children alike, is that the Emirates Lions players, on this day, played games with children and created even more smiles not only for those who had to endure stigmatisation and rejection because of their birth defect. but also for those whose mothers cried tears of relief as they sent them into surgery in their young lives, and then came out with a new future before them.

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“Children with facial deformities are often ostracised and their parents face long, difficult journeys to assist their children both physically and emotionally,” said Hedley Lewis, CEO of the Smile Foundation.