Since the outbreak of COVID-19, Future Smile took immediate steps to help the hardest-hit regions in China. In the beginning, the foundation focused on the procurement of medical supplies and equipment. As the crisis exacerbated, we took further steps to support medical centers; we strive to save as many lives as possible and prevent the vulnerable from suffering mentally from the epidemic. After more than four months of restless battle against COVID-19, Future Smile Foundation has set up ways of allowing anyone to contribute to this fight. We have raised more than 64 million RMB in funds and material resources. For now, 84.7% of the donation had been used to help more than 250 NPOs.

In 1948, May 8 was marked as World Smile Day, a day devoted to the spreading of simple joy and love to everyone, regardless of race, gender, and location. It’s a day that encourages people to take action and bring more smiles into the world. Future Smile took action, too.

During May 7-8, in order to raise the public awareness of the “future smile” of cleft lip/palate children, the foundation teamed up with 23 famous Chinese celebrities and 12 corporations and media platforms, posting 21 public service announcement videos in the topic of Smile Relay Challenge. These posts gained a total of 250 million views and clicks. We believe that as more accurate information on the cleft lip/palate disease is made available to the public, cleft lip/palate children will receive more attention, help, and kindness.

The sudden outbreak of COVID-19 has had an immense impact on children who have speech problems, such as stuttering, post-operation cleft palate, autism, Down Syndrome, etc. Most of the children require continuous speech therapy.

To help those children continue their therapy during the lockdown, Future Smile cooperated with Mooctalk, a technology company, and more than 30 rehabilitation centers to launch an online speech therapy program. We provided speech-language assessments and three sessions of online speech therapy for free.

Since this March, Future Smile has started to provide free online speech therapy to all post-operation cleft palates patients. Although online therapy has its limitations, many parents responded that this is immensely beneficial for their children. Luo is a 25 years old girl who received her palate surgery in Future Smile Mission in 2019. Despite the late surgery and therapy age, her speech has improved remarkably after three months of online speech therapy. Luo has a job as a customer service worker in a call center. She said her customer used to ask if she is eating during the call. Now, she is no longer in this awkward situation. Surgery is only the start, we believe there is that more we can do.

On May 21, two weeks after mailing, a batch of clothing arrived in Shenzha County Middle School which is located in Rikaze, Tibet. The package includes 200 down jackets, 120 sets of sportswear, 200 pairs of sports pants, 300 pairs of gloves, 200 scarves, 200 down hats, 250 sun hats, and 40 sports backpacks.