Project Smile

Poor oral health care can result in poor overall Health'. When a person is subjected to regular consumption of cigarette, tobacco containing products and other toxic chemical containing products, he/she may suffer from oral diseases. It is very necessary for one to maintain their oral hygiene. Kanchanrup is a small village of Saptari district. People mainly children here are at high risk of oral disease due to high intake of tobacco containing products and as low status of oral hygiene is maintained by people here. When we went to find the root cause of this problem we got list of causes. One of the major causes of this problem was the lack of awareness among people about the importance of maintaining oral hygiene. Children along with adults here are not aware about proper brushing techniques one should follow and negative harms on intake of harmful chemical and tobacco containing products. People here believe that consuming cigarette, chewing tobacco, bidi, cigars etc. is a gesture of showing off. Due to this delusion children here also tend to follow this misconception and start consuming these harmful products from small age. In one hand, children are not restricted by their parents too on consuming such products and on other hand are not informed and taught about the importance of brushing their teeth due to which from a small age we can see black and grey stains in the teeth of any child of Kanchanrup village.

Rishav’s home is located in the beautiful, hilly region of Terai, in Eastern Nepal. One day Rishav was out in his community and noticed a group of young people running and playing near his home and he joined in the fun. He explains that this was his moment of obligation. “We were all laughing and I couldn’t help but notice the state of their teeth. I asked a few of them about it and quickly realized oral awareness was lacking and oral health was necessary.” Rishav explained that Terai is especially vulnerable to oral disease because farmers use and grow tobacco and have little access to oral health education. Rishav knew he could help these students, and created, “Project SMILE”.

Thus, project 'SMILE' aims to spread awareness among 200 children of Kanchanrup village of Saptari district on importance of oral health and hygiene and teaching them proper techniques of brushing their teeth and maintain oral hygiene. The awareness class will also comprise of storytelling session, distribution of animated awareness pamphlets to help the children understand the issue more easily.