Three Miles Walked For Children’s Smiles

More than 25 walkers joined Clarkstown North junior Zach Silverman in raising awareness and money for Operation Smile. The 5K Walk around Rockland Lake on Sunday brought together area residents and members of local dental offices, who collected more than $1,500, enough funds to cover the cost of six cleft palate or cleft lip surgeries.  For every $240 raised Operation Smile provides a life changing cleft lip and/or palate surgery.

Operation Smile is a community service organization, which helps to provide life-changing surgeries for children born with cleft lips and palates. These types of birth defects can affect a child’s lingual development as well as their nutrition and socialization skills.  

Silverman said his goal is “to bring general awareness to the Operation Smile cause, while bringing together the community. In doing this, I am aiming to show people how life changing a 45 minute surgery can be for a child.”  

The New City resident came up with the idea after his older brother, Scott, a student at Penn State University, helped to raise money for pediatric cancer through THON. Silverman said the connection with Operation Smile, a worldwide medical charity, meshed with his career interests.  

“Since I’m interested in dentistry and Oral Surgery, I thought that Operation Smile would be a good fit,” he said, noting his father Bart is an oral surgeon. “The main goal is to fund as many life changing surgeries as possible.”

Silverman chose Rockland Lake as the site for the walk because he has joined many walks there that raised money. He said Operation Smile helped him get started with a fundraising tool kit and then he spread the news by word of mouth and flyers, used social media and general mailings to local dental offices.  

According to its website, Operation Smile 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 since 1982.