To establish an ongoing mission to provide dental services to underserved areas in rural Northern Thailand and neighboring countries. The mission will enable annual check-ups for previously served patients, as well as new patients in expanded service areas.
Our 2nd humanitarian trip participants consists of just under 30 Americans, a Thai-Australian dental assistant and multiple Thai Dental Professionals.
The 1st Thai Smiles humanitarian trip was done Feb 9, 2017 - Feb 25, 2017. It consisted of a group of 17 US volunteers and the same number of Thai volunteers. This group organized humanitarian efforts, concentrated on Nan, Thailand. Thai smiles worked under Thainitiative, a non-profit charitable organization who has been doing academic and educational humanitarian work in Nan for 5 years. The US group included 2 licensed dentists, 1 licensed periodontist, 1 licensed pedodontist, 2 registered dental hygienists, 3 certified dental assistants, a registered nurse, a pharmacist, translators and educators. We worked in conjunction with the Nan Department of Health (specifically with Dr. Kamula) and 2 hospitals in the Nan Providence (Wiang Sa and Santhisuk).
Thai Smiles Inc was founded as a nonprofit entity in 2017. After returning from our first mission trip to the area in Feb 2017 and 1) seeing the great dental need of the area and 2) working closely with Thai Dental Professionals and the Nan Department of Health, it was determined that a regular scheduled return date would be necessary. Currently, Thai Smiles is dedicates to return to the area every 2 years. We hope to increase our return intervals to a yearly mission as interest grows and word spreads.
Thai Smiles could not have gotten it's start without the aid of Thainitiative and it's founder, Daphne Larsen.