Before blogging was mainstream. Before Mark Zukerberg was at Harvard. Before I met Twitter and fell in love. Before I lost myself in Pinterest. I maybe sort of wanted to join the Peace Corps. No lie.

But, I was scared. So instead, I went on a short term medical mission to Africa – Ghana to be exact. I fell in love with the country, the people and the beautiful children (I also learned how to scrub in and suture, so I COULD be helpful in an emergency. Just sayin’.)

And how could you not love a face like this one?

So, when Amy and Heather shared their vision for a bloggy fundraiser benefiting Operation Smile I felt strongly about becoming involved.

600 wide banner

Operation Smile is a charity organization healing children’s smiles, one operation at a time.

Operation Smile is more than a charity organization though. They are a mobilized force of medical professionals and caring hearts who provide safe, effective reconstructive surgery for children born with facial deformities such as cleft lip and cleft palate. Each operation costs approximately $240.

Every three minutes a child is born with a cleft — often unable to eat, speak, socialize or smile. In some places these children are shunned and rejected. And in too many cases, their parents can’t afford to give them the surgeries they need to live a normal life.

To help, we’ve created “Swap A Smile” to raise funds to cover operations. Our goal is to be able to give at least 5 children new smiles and help them to live the life they were meant to live.

operation smile

image source

Each of the bloggers involved in this project has agreed to auction off an item that they have made and shared with their readers recently on their individual websites.  Below you will see a list of all of the items that are being auctioned off.  You can access each item by clicking on the link or the image and you will be redirected to that persons site and the item that they are auctioning off.

I would love to be able to say I had a lovely objet d’art to donate to this worthwhile cause, but I find myself lacking. Luckily, Amy and Heather have graciously allowed me a little leeway. So rather than one of few and far between DIY projects, I am sharing a little something from my biggest bloggy project – one ticket to SNAP!

The auction begins now and will end on Friday, October 14 at 12:00 pm PST.  Each item has been assigned a shipping cost that will be added to the highest bidding price. The item will go to the highest bidder. You can bid on an item by leaving a comment on the individual’s post leaving us your name and the price you are bidding.

If you are not interested in bidding, but would still like to help out, we have also made it so that you can donate any amount to help us out with this great cause!  Every little bit helps!

Click on the donate button if you would like to donate directly to Swap a Smile!

We will be writing a follow up post and providing everyone with a screen shot of the PayPal account and keep you updated on our progress so you can be sure that your money is really going to support this cause.

image

image source

For more information regarding Operation Smile and their mission statement and goals you can read about them on their site OperationSmile.Org.

I am auctioning one ticket to full conference ticket to SNAP! (value $200). To bid on the ticket, please comment on this post.

Please place your bid in full dollar amounts (i.e. if the previous bid was $1 you have to bid $2, rather than $1.50).

And be sure you check out all of the other great sites participating: