Abbot Giles Hayes, college guidance counselor and former headmaster at Delbarton School in Morristown, New Jersey, seeks to teach each student about the value of service and prioritizing the needs of others. Abbot Giles Hayes brought Operation Smile Club to Delbarton in the early 1980s, and since that time has followed its success in helping students help children.
An international medical charity, Operation Smile provides free cleft-lip and cleft-palate surgeries to children while raising money for awareness and treatment of these conditions. At Delbarton School, the Operation Smile Club partners with the organization to sponsor fundraisers and send students on surgical mission trips to sites around the world. The Club impacts not only the children it serves, but students like Conor White, Class of 2013, who received Operation Smile's Davis Shick Award in 2012.
Conor White joined the Operation Smile Club in his freshman year at Delbarton School. By his junior year, he had signed on for mission work and traveled to the Middle East in the summer of 2012. There, he witnessed firsthand the impact that Delbarton School fundraisers had in making surgeries possible for children. Seeing the gratitude of both the children and their families after surgery, he returned to Delbarton to share his experience and encourage others to get involved. Delbarton’s Operation Smile chapter remains strong, and student volunteers have organized such events as the 4 Smiles Benefit Music Concert, which brought local performers together to raise money for Operation Smile in the spring of 2014.
An international medical charity, Operation Smile provides free cleft-lip and cleft-palate surgeries to children while raising money for awareness and treatment of these conditions. At Delbarton School, the Operation Smile Club partners with the organization to sponsor fundraisers and send students on surgical mission trips to sites around the world. The Club impacts not only the children it serves, but students like Conor White, Class of 2013, who received Operation Smile's Davis Shick Award in 2012.
Conor White joined the Operation Smile Club in his freshman year at Delbarton School. By his junior year, he had signed on for mission work and traveled to the Middle East in the summer of 2012. There, he witnessed firsthand the impact that Delbarton School fundraisers had in making surgeries possible for children. Seeing the gratitude of both the children and their families after surgery, he returned to Delbarton to share his experience and encourage others to get involved. Delbarton’s Operation Smile chapter remains strong, and student volunteers have organized such events as the 4 Smiles Benefit Music Concert, which brought local performers together to raise money for Operation Smile in the spring of 2014.