Donna-Lee Young Rubin, the Mission Director for the Rotaplast Mission to Barquisimeto, Venezuela, was the featured speaker at a meeting of the Rotary Club of Glastonbury last April at the Gallery Restaurant. Ms. Rubin reported to Club members on the successes of the Rotaplast Mission in September of 2003, of which the Glastonbury Rotary Club was a major contributor, donating $10,000.00 which was used to perform life changing cleft palate surgery on twenty youngsters.

Seeing a child smile for the first time is priceless. Hundreds of Rotary volunteers get to experience this every year by participating in a volunteer medical project called Rotaplast - Rotary Plastic Surgery - that has worked to restore the physical and emotional lives of impoverished children through free reconstructive surgery for more than 10 years. Nearly 4,000 children have been helped at a cost of US$20 million in donated medical services.

The surgical team is one of numerous humanitarian missions organized each year to bring medical care to poor or isolated parts of the world. Many focus on repair of cleft lip and palate, conditions that occur worldwide, but occur especially often in South America and parts of Asia.

Approximately 230 Rotary clubs are involved in the program, along with nearly 1,000 medical volunteers.

The number of countries hosting Rotaplast teams includes Chile, Argentina, Venezuela, Bolivia, Peru, Guatemala, Ecuador, Vietnam and the Philippines. The program has been able to expand due to the support of hundreds of medical and non-medical volunteers who give their time, and organizations such as hospitals and medical equipment companies which give supplies. An average of over one hundred children are helped on each mission.

"You can understand what you have really done by looking in the parents' eyes. This is the most precious acknowledgement of one's work, and the reason why I go on these missions," said one surgeon who recently returned from a mission to Venezuela.

Rotaplast began in 1994 as a project of the Rotary Club of San Francisco. In 2002, Rotaplast will send 450 volunteers to 14 sites, treating almost 1,500 children.