A blog about our son Jake, born in 2008 with a cleft lip and palate. I started it the day after the cleft was diagnosed and continue to write for people who turn up here every day after getting the same news. A cleft lip and palate is not the end of the world. Start at the first post and then read on...
Thursday, 25 July 2013
Smile Pinki at Wimbledon
This is post is late. However due to the way cross rail ads work, it's still relevant. Sort of.
I work in Wimbledon and each summer I am forced to contend with a few extra commuters on my morning commute. By 'few' I mean thousands and by ''commuters' I mean tennis junkies. Combine a decent British summer with a successful run in the tournament by a Brit and the available air in the train carriage is exponentially decreased.
Andy, the Scot, is no more; Mr Murray firmly established his Britishness by winning Wimbledon a few weeks ago and he did it in straight sets against the world number 1. Fair play, sir (surely?).
Anyway, the point of all this is to say that for two weeks prior to and ever since (around 6 weeks at the time of writing), Wimbledon station has had a Smile Train takeover, in terms of advertising at least. Virtually every adshel, 48 and 96 sheet billboard have featured massive images of Pinki, the girl who inspired Smile Train to make a film which won an oscar (order your free copy).
Smile Train had been selected as the charity to perform the coin toss before the final and Pinki was the natural choice of coin tosser! She looks incredible; to think of the transformation from just a short few years ago where she'd endured six years of an unrepaired cleft lip and all that goes along with it. Since the repair, she's been all around the world helping Smile Train show to potential doners the immediate and sustained effect just a few quid a month can do.
I blogged previously about how I went to the 10 year anniversary where they told of the half a million cleft operations which had been performed for free in some of the poorest countries on earth...that was 4 years ago and they're currently up to 906,138 operations. The magic million is literally only months away.
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