New Equipment for Nuevas Sonrisas Free Clinics

TL;DR We run free dental clinics for children in rural Guatemala, and our equipment needs replacing.

Every year since 2008 (two pandemic years excepted), a team of 30 volunteers from Nuevas Sonrisas has traveled to a small rural area in southeast Guatemala to provide free dental services such as fluoride applications and sealants to some 2500 first and second graders. We create fully-equipped pop-up dental clinics in two elementary schools, where we do fillings and extractions for nearly a thousand kids.

Nuevas Sonrisas has no paid staff, no overhead expenses such as offices or phones, and our volunteers pay their own travel and living expenses. Because of this, we typically do only minimal fundraising. But now, our aging dental equipment needs to be replaced before our next trip, and we hope you'll consider helping us do that.

Specifically, we're looking to buy twelve portable dental units (our two pop-up clinics have six dental chairs each) that are designed for just the sort of work we do - in environments with unreliable electricity and limited clean water. The least expensive of these units are just over $1300 each. (See photos at our English language website, www.nuevassonrisas.org.)

Nuestro sitio en Español: www.nuevassonrisas.gt