350 students to benefit in healthy smile drive
Juanito I. King Foundation Inc. partners with PHS for 9-month project
MORE than 350 students of Tabunan Integrated School in Cebu City will receive tooth-brushing kits, dental care and regular dental education for nine months this year.
This, after the Project Healthy Smile (PHS), an all volunteer United Statesbased non-profit organization that promotes oral health to underprivileged children worldwide, comes to the Philippines for the first-time to do the project.
Coming from the success of the IwasGingivitis Project and Bright Smiles Bright Futures, the Juanito I. King Foundation Inc. (JIKFI), the corporate social responsibility arm of the King Group of Companies, partnered with PHS to fortify sustainable oral health project among the less privileged children of Cebu. This is another initiative under the Mobile Dental Van project of JIKFI.
Attended by JIKFI executive director Kenneth King, JIKFI operations manager Maurice Yodong, PHS executive director/ co-founder Michelle Patterson and PHS executive director/co-founder Hollie Mae Schultz, the signing of the memorandum of agreement was ratified last Feb. 2.
Drill
In Tabunan Integrated School, the Project Healthy Smile was launched on Feb. 3. During the activity, the children were each given tooth-brushing kits. A brief discussion on oral health and proper tooth-brushing drill then followed, which was spearheaded by Patterson.
The PHS is a two-phased project, which initially commenced this month and March; it will resume in June and will last until December this year. It is aimed at promoting oral hygiene to its beneficiaries and to increase the number of orally-fit children, especially those in the rural community.
Tooth scaling and polishing will be done after the first two-month period and once every three months for the second phase of the program implementation to help maintain the degree of oral fitness among the beneficiaries.
By the end of the school year, the children will undergo assessment to evaluate the impact of the project.
PHS began with a trail mission in the slums of Saigon, Vietnam. There, Patterson and Schultz provided a lesson on oral health and stressed the importance of daily homecare compliance.
Even with limited resources they had back then, they realized the enormous and positive impact that was made. At present, PHS has programs in Haiti, Uganda, Vietnam and Cambodia.