Making a difference, one smile at a time

Making a difference, one smile at a time:

When Eversdal Primary School Fourth grade learner Marné van der Merwe heard that she could help others, just by collecting plastic bottle tops she was inspired.

“I saw on the lid of the Fair Cape milk bottle that recycling could raise money for children to have an operation for a cleft palate or cleft lip,” she explained. “And I thought ‘everyone should be able to smile’ so I wanted to help.”
The message on the milk bottle lids were part of the campaign initiated by the Fair Cape Cares Foundation to raise money for the life-changing operations.

“This is the second year that we have worked with Operation Smile,” said Louis Loubser, CMO of Fair Cape Dairies. “The Fair Cape Cares Foundation exists to make a significant difference to the charities we support. We are really inspired by the way communities and schools like Eversdal took part and we are proud that our contribution will pay for five operations this year.”

Ten-year-old Marné did not hesitate. She made an appointment to see her headmaster, Henk Arangies, and told him about the campaign. He agreed that the school could be involved, assigned a teacher to help and the collecting began.

Every bottle cap that was brought to the school was equivalent to one point in the inter-house competition. The result was that during 2016, Eversdal Primary children and their friends, parents and grandparents collected close to 400 000 bottle tops and were responsible for more than half of the money raised during the campaign to pay for Operation Smile operations.

“One of the oupas even paid people to go through dustbins and find bottle tops,” Marné said. “They came to school with 26 000 one day!”
“Our school motto is Damus,” said Mr Arangies. “That means ‘we give’ and our learners have shown that they take that responsibility seriously.”
The children had the opportunity to see first-hand the difference that their collections made when John Kibari took part in a special assembly at the school this week where the Fair Cape Cares Foundation handed over a cheque for R23 500 Operation Smile. He explained how donations like this one had changed his life.

“Doctors told me it would cost R75 000 to fix my lip and teeth,” he said. “For my whole life I felt such shame. I felt I was not really human. But I knew that I would not be able to afford to change the way I looked.”
Then a stranger saw him in a shopping centre and put him in touch with Operation Smile and he was included in the group of adults and children who were operated on in 2014.

“We love the way the whole community has come together during this campaign,” said Adva Brivik from Operation Smile, South Africa. “People from all over the province have been taking their bottle caps to libraries and shopping centres. The response has been fantastic and we are looking forward to an even better response next year when the campaign starts again.”

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