WHAT IS OPERATION SMILE SHAMROCK FINAL MILE?

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2 WHAT IS OPERATION SMILE SHAMROCK FINAL MILE? The Operation Smile Shamrock Final Mile is designed to teach kids the importance of exercise, commitment and giving back in their community. Through Operation Smile they also learn the value of giving to others. Students ages 5 to 12 can participate and it s easy! Students run 25.2 miles before race day, just a few miles a week! For each mile they run, they can collect a small pledge and reach the $240 that it takes to change a child s life! Then students come together to run their Final Mile to complete a marathon at the Virginia Beach Oceanfront on Saturday, March 19, 2016 as a part of the Shamrock Marathon Weekend. Students can log miles in PE class, a running club, or with friends and family after school. So come on, have your students run for a great cause, get fit, and help someone else along the way! WHY IS THE OPERATION SMILE FINAL MILE IMPORTANT? Getting fit and staying healthy are important for the mind and body, promoting selfesteem and enhanced learning in school! Not only do students help themselves stay fit, but they also help others too. Not every boy or girl is able to go to school, sometimes kids with cleft lips and cleft palates are bullied and made fun of making the thought of going to school very scary. Students are helping a child with a cleft by donating money to Operation Smile! The money raised will help provide surgery to a child giving them a chance to smile. It takes as little as $240 and as few as 45 minutes to change a child s life forever. WHY DO STUDENTS WANT TO RUN? THEY RUN TO Have Fun! Stay Healthy! Heal Smiles!

3 STEPS FOR SCHOOL PARTICIPATION STEP 1: CREATE A SCHOOL GOAL Create a school goal by determining the number of participations you wish to have and the amount of money you would like to raise for your school! It only takes $ to change one child s life. STEP 2: FUNDRAISE FOR OPERATION SMILE Use the SmileTracker: Our SmileTracker is a fun and easy way for students to raise money to change one smile! The SmileTracker includes a donation log and a sleeve to collect pledges. The best part is that it makes asking for donations fun! For each mile your students run, there s a shamrock for them to scratch-off. They can ask a neighbor, family member or friend to sponsor a mile and then scratch off a shamrock. Underneath, the sponsor will find a donation amount of $1, $5, $10, $15 or $20 to help them reach the students goal of healing one smile! To request SmileTrackers please the quantity you wish to receive along with your school s name to finalmile@operationsmile.org. Donate Online: Friends and family that prefer to make an online donation can do so through the school s team page and/or a student s individual team page. See Step 3 for more information about how to request a team page. The team page link is easy to share via and social media. Hold a School Fundraiser: Your school can hold a fundraiser to work together to meet your goal. We ve got student-approved fundraising ideas later in this toolkit to help you get started! Even if students aren t running they can help change a child s life by fundraising for your school s final mile team! STEP 3: CREATE A SCHOOL TEAM PAGE ONLINE Create your school s team page to promote online donations. To request a team page for your school, please visit Select Register and fill out the information to Request a School Team. You can personalize your page to include your efforts to support Operation Smile. Don t forget to include your fundraising goal! Once a school team page has been created you will receive an letting you know the school team page is ready to use!

4 Teachers, parents and students can then track their school s fundraising progress through the thermometer on their school s team page! Please share your school s team page link through and social media in support of your students and school goal. STEP 4: PROMOTE THE FINAL MILE TO YOUR SCHOOL Involve all of your students, educators and administration to be a part of Operation Smile Final Mile and have your students who participate spread awareness about Operation Smile! Promote the Operation Smile Final Mile by: Hanging up posters Running miles in P.E. class Making morning announcements Participating in the Silly Shamrock Competition Create a fundraising rivalry with another school Hand out buttons or stickers Don t forget to share your school s goals and online team fundraising page with your students! STEP 5: ENCOURAGE STUDENTS TO REGISTER FOR THE RACE In order for students to be eligible for running in the final mile at the Shamrock Marathon, parents must register their children through the 2016 Shamrock Marathon website: This will include the race fee of $20.00 to J&A Racing. Remember the fee goes up closer to race day! STEP 6: GET READY FOR THE RACE! Have your students run 25.2 miles before race day, by running just a few miles a week. Your students can log miles in PE class, running club, or with friends and family after school!

5 STEP 7: SIGN YOUR SCHOOL UP FOR THE FINAL MILE CELEBRATION In honor of the 10 th Operation Smile Shamrock Final Mile, we will be hosting a Final Mile Celebration on Friday, March 18, 2016 from 10:00 a.m.-1:00 p.m. to celebrate your school s participation and support of Operation Smile. This is a field trip opportunity for you and your students. We will also be holding the Silly Shamrock Competition at this event. RSVP for your school by ing finalmile@operationsmile.org. Space is limited! STEP 8: SUBMIT DONATIONS Have your students use the SmileTracker to collect their check and cash donations. We want to give receipts to all donors properly for their donation to Operation Smile. To facilitate this, we ask that you help us by emphasizing to students to carefully track donor s information in the SmileTracker. Please encourage students to return their SmileTracker and donations to the Final Mile Coordinator (this could be you!) three days prior to the Final Mile. We will be announcing the top 2016 Final Mile fundraisers at the Final Mile Celebration this year. For your schools fundraising efforts to be included please turn in all donations at least two days prior to the Final Mile Celebration. You can return them to the Operation Smile Headquarters at Operation Smile, 3641 Faculty Blvd. Virginia Beach, VA If you and your students can t make it to the Final Mile Celebration please return the SmileTrackers to the Operation Smile table at the Shamrock Sports and Fitness Expo the day prior to the event. STEP 9: FINAL MILE RACE! On March 19, 2016 students will run their "Final Mile" to complete a marathon at the Virginia Beach Oceanfront. Your school team can run together! Last year we had over 5,000 elementary school participants. We are anticipating even more this year!

6 STEP 10: KEEP YOUR STUDENTS INVOLVED! There are many ways for students to get involved with Operation Smile in addition to just fundraising. Service projects, holding a toy drive and making get well soon cards are to name a few! Please see later in the toolkit for additional service project ideas. We also host World Tour Conferences where students are able to spend a field trip at our Virginia Beach Headquarters and visit different countries through presentations put on by Operation Smile Staff and Volunteers. Student Programs representatives are also available to your school to talk about Operation Smile and to motivate students. For more information about student involvement you can visit our website at

7 SILLY SHAMROCK COMPETITION AND FINAL MILE CELEBRATION The Silly Shamrock Competition happens every year prior to the Operation Smile Shamrock Final Mile race. Educators from different schools dress up in their best Shamrock attire and compete against other schools in a costume competition on stage. Any school who is interested is welcome to have a representative dress up! This year, in Honor of the 10 th Operation Smile Shamrock Final Mile, we will be hosting a Final Mile Celebration on Friday, March 18, 2016 from 10:00 a.m.-1:00 p.m. This is a field trip opportunity for you and your students. We will be holding the Silly Shamrock Competition during the celebration this year. For more information or if you are interested in nominating a representative from your school to participate in the Silly Shamrock competition, please join us in The Big Tent at the Shamrock Finish Line by RSVPing your school at finalmile@operationsmile.org. Space is limited!

8 FUNDRAISING IDEAS Students can collect their fundraising pledges several different ways. Here are a few ideas to get you and your students started: Host a lemonade or hot chocolate stand: Set up a stand to sell lemonade, hot chocolate or some other sort of drink at school or in a neighborhood! Sell candy-grams at school: Create bags of candy where students can buy for themselves, their peers or teachers at school. These candy-grams usually have tags where students can write messages to the person they are sending them to! Host a pie your teacher in the face day: Place jars around the school with names of different teachers who students would like to pie in the face. Students can purchase tickets and write their name on the back of the ticket. The teacher who gets the most tickets will be pied in the face. Draw a ticket from that teacher s jar-whichever student entered that ticket gets to pie the teacher in the face! Host a bake sale at your school: Parents, students and administration can contribute baked goods for a one-day sale. Children and/or parents can be invited in to buy these treats. Host a dress down day at your school: Ask for a specific, small donation amount for students and teachers to participate in a Dress Down Day where they can wear jeans or other comfortable clothing not usually allowed at school such as hats. Host week long coin wars throughout different grade levels at your school: Label a jar with each grade. Coins in the jar are worth positive points and bills are worth negative points. Students put coins in their own grade s jar and bills in other grades. Grades will compete to see who wins the most points at the end of the week! Hold a raffle: Sell tickets for the chance to win a particular prize this could be a basket of goods, a 50/50 draw for cash, or another prize donated by the community or school. Participate in the Silly Shamrock Competition: Different teachers dress up as a Silly Shamrock and the students will vote on the winner by donating money into a jar for each teacher. The teacher with the most money wins and will represent your school in a regional competition at the Final Mile Celebration s Silly Shamrock Competition! Be creative and come up with your own ideas on how to receive pledges. Don t forget to share those ideas with us at finalmile@operationsmile.org so we can share them with other students in the future.

9 SERVICE PROJECT IDEAS In addition to fundraising students can also help Operation Smile by hosting a service project. Service projects include: Writing get well soon cards Smile bag item donation drive Sewing Smile bags Sewing Smile dolls Making banners to hang in hospitals Hosting a toy drive Making friendship bracelets For more information about service projects please visit or student.programs@operationsmile.org.

10 OPERATION SMILE FACTS VISION Operation Smile dreams of a world where no child suffers from lack of access to safe surgery. ABOUT OPERATION SMILE Operation Smile is an international medical charity whose global network of thousands of credentialed medical volunteers from more than 80 countries is dedicated to helping improve the health and lives of children from more than 60 countries. Since its founding in 1982, Operation Smile has provided more than 240,000 free surgical procedures for children and young adults born with cleft lip, cleft palate and other facial deformities. To build long-term sufficiency in resource poor environments, Operation Smile trains doctors and local medical professionals in its partner countries so they are empowered to treat their local communities and help others around the world. Operation Smile also donates medical equipment and supplies and provides year-round medical treatments through its worldwide centers. URGENT NEED It is estimated that two billion people, or one-quarter of the world s population, lack access to basic surgical care. Every 3 minutes, a child is born somewhere in the world with a cleft lip or cleft palate. In many countries where we work, there are not enough trained medical professionals to handle the growing need and backlog of cleft cases. Lack of access to surgery is estimated to cause up to one-quarter of the death and disability that exists in the world. This significant burden of disease is rapidly growing and can be treated, alleviated or cured with surgery. The facts are staggering: each year more people die because of lack of access to surgical care than from HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria combined. Despite the significant volume of surgical procedures worldwide, lack of access to surgery remains a serious problem for the world s poor. While the wealthiest one-third of the world s population receive 75% of all surgical procedures, the poorest one-third of the world s population receive only 4%.

11 CLEFT LIP AND CLEFT PALATE A cleft is a gap in the mouth that didn't close during the early stages of pregnancy. It is estimated that, worldwide, a child is born every 3 minutes with a cleft about one in 750 births. It takes as few as 45 minutes and as little as $240 to repair a cleft lip or cleft palate. HISTORY Operation Smile was founded in 1982 by Dr. William (Bill) Magee Jr., a plastic surgeon, and his wife, Kathleen (Kathy) Magee, a nurse and clinical social worker. Operation Smile was launched with its first mission to the Philippines in OVERALL IMPACT TO DATE Operation Smile is one of the largest surgical organizations in the world. Operation Smile is the largest volunteer-based medical charity providing free cleft surgeries. Through our partnership with the American Heart Association we are one of the largest providers of life saving courses (Basic Life Support - BLS, Pediatric Advanced Life Support - PALS and Advanced Cardiac Life Support - ACLS) to resource-poor environments. Operation Smile is leading research into the causes of cleft lip and cleft palate, and its prevention, treatment and surgical outcomes. Operation Smile is a pioneer in advocating for the importance of safe surgery in resource-poor environments where the lack of safe surgery accounts for 11% of all death and disability. We listen to our patients to understand what prevents them from accessing care so we can break down those obstacles for children and families who need surgery. Operation Smile increases overall surgical capacity and cleft treatment in communities where we work by providing health care workers with medical equipment, supplies, education and training. We demonstrate industry-leading clinical management practices through our Global Standards of Care, which help ensure we provide the best quality of care for our patients around the world. Operation Smile has provided over 240,000 free surgeries to children with cleft lip, cleft palate and other facial deformities.

12 There are hundreds of registered Operation Smile Student Clubs worldwide with a network of more than 18,000 students building awareness, raising funds and educating others about core values of commitment, leadership and volunteerism. Operation Smile Student Programs empowers youth, creating a global movement for positive change through our four pillars of philanthropy: Leadership, Education, Service, and Awareness. ABOUT OPERATION SMILE S GLOBAL HEADQUARTERS Operation Smile s Global Headquarters is located in Virginia Beach, Virginia, and is equipped with industry leading technology to operate as an educational hub connecting educators and trainees around the world.

13 FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS Question: Answer: Question: Answer: Question: Answer: Question: Answer: Question: Answer: Question: Answer: Can Operation Smile sponsor me? No. Operation Smile cannot sponsor, solicit sponsorship or reimburse expenses for fundraising events. How will the money be used? A gift made through your fundraising efforts represents a gift to the entire Operation Smile mission and will help to heal children s smiles throughout the globe. Do I need to give receipts to the donors who make donations? Donors will be given receipts for by Operation Smile Headquarters if the proper information is recorded. Please fill out the donation log in the SmileTracker for donors to be given receipts. What should a donor do if they want to donate after the event? If the event is over and you have already submitted funds to Operation Smile, donors can send their checks to the Operation Smile Headquarters (3641 Faculty Blvd. Virginia Beach, VA 23453). Your donor can also give a gift by credit card by calling Operation Smile Headquarters at Monday-Friday, 8:30 A.M.-5:30 P.M. E.S.T. When submitting either by check or by credit card, the donor should provide the event name, Operation Smile Shamrock Final Mile and the student s name. We will be happy to accept their donation. If I collect checks or cash, who should I send it to? You should turn all donations into Operation Smile two days prior to the Final Mile Celebration or to the Operation Smile table at the Final Mile Expo the day prior to the event. If you miss this deadline please send checks to Student Programs at Operation Smile Headquarters. See address above. Bundle donations together with the completed donation logs in the SmileTrackers for us to track the donations. Can I keep the cash collected and forward a check from my own checking account? Yes, however names and addresses and the amount they gave in cash must be entered on the donation log in the SmileTracker in order for them to receive a receipt. Please note any additional amount that you are including as your own donation so you can receive a receipt as well.

14 Since 2006, the Final Mile program has helped heal over 1,500 smiles that s 1,500 brighter futures created, lives saved, and families transformed forever! Have your students make a difference in the lives of children around the world while having fun! Take the pledge and have your students do the same to share the Operation Smile mission with friends and family. TEACHER PLEDGE Sign your name below to take the pledge! I,, pledge to encourage my students to run 25.2 miles between now and the Shamrock Marathon Weekend on March 19, On race day my students will cross the finish line to complete their Final Mile. Help my students help others by pledging per mile! My students are going the extra mile to help kids receive new smiles! My students are collecting donations for Operation Smile, any amount raised will help give new smiles for children in need. STUDENT PLEDGE Have your students sign their names below to take the pledge! I,, pledge to run 25.2 miles between now and the Shamrock Marathon Weekend on March 19, On race day I ll cross the finish line to complete my Final Mile. Help me help other by pledging per mile! I am going the extra mile to help kids receive new smiles! I am collecting donations for Operation Smile, any amount raised will help give new smiles for children in need.