As a family, we like to help children during the holiday season. We think it is important to help others and to teach our children the importance of helping others. Each year we pick a few names off of a Christmas tree in our town and buy a present for a child in need. But this year, I’d like to do more. My oldest will be six this holiday season, and I think she’d enjoy helping at a soup kitchen, shopping for children, and donating to our local food bank.
Does your family have any special volunteer traditions at the holidays?
I was really happy to learn that CampusBookRentals.com works with Operation Smile. Campus Book Rentals will help you save up to 80% by renting text books. (Genius idea! Textbooks are so expensive!) A portion of each textbook rental goes towards Operation Smile.
What is Operation Smile, you ask?
Operation Smile is an international children’s medical charity that heals children’s smiles, forever changing their lives.We’re a mobilized force of medical professionals and caring hearts who provide safe, effective reconstructive surgery and related medical care for children born with facial deformities such as cleft lip and cleft palate.
Every three minutes a child is born with a cleft. One in 10 of those children will die before their first birthday. The children who survive are often unable to eat, speak, socialize or smile. In some places, they are shunned and rejected. And in too many cases, their parents can’t afford to give them the surgeries they need to live a productive life.
Every child deserves access to safe, quality surgical care. Every child deserves a future filled with hope.
That’s where we come in as the largest volunteer-based medical charity providing free cleft surgeries. Since 1982, Operation Smile — through the help of dedicated medical volunteers — has provided more than 3.5 million comprehensive patient evaluations and over 200,000 free surgeries for children and young adults born with facial deformities. Our work creates a lasting global impact. We train local doctors in developing countries and strengthen healthcare systems so more children in some of the poorest areas in the world can be treated.
As one of the most prominent charities for children in the world, we work in over 60 countries to heal children’s smiles and bring hope for a better future. Together, we are saving children’s lives.
I have actually seen the commercials on TV for Operation Smile and I was moved. I think it is great the Campus Book Rentals supports this charity with their Making a Difference program. Campus Book Rentals has committed to donate a minimum of 80 additional surgeries between June 2013 and June 2014!
If you have a child in school, in college, or you homeschool, you must check out Campus Book Rentals. It is always nice to save money and know you are helping children in need! They also have a RentBack program. RentBack is new initiative that allows students to rent the textbooks they own – to other students, which is awesome because it makes them 2-4x more money compared to what they’d make through buyback options! (selling their books back at the end of the semester) Isn’t that awesome?! Learn more here.
