Let the Healing Begin
Our Mission
To provide free surgical and dental services to poor and underprivileged children and young adults in various countries throughout the underdeveloped world, as well as facilitate the transfer of education, knowledge and recent innovations to the local medical communities.
Medical Missions for Children, Inc.,(MMFC) is a Massachusetts based non-profit organization that dispatches teams of volunteer surgeons, anesthesiologists, dentists, nurses, speech pathologists, and nutritionists to the most remote and underprivileged communities in the developing world. The focus of MMFC’s missions is the surgical care of cleft lip and palate deformities, head and neck tumors, severe burn injuries, microtia(absence of the outer ear), and dental disease. As well, we work to advance medical education and clinical training, and to expand hospital care facilities, in every country we visit.
Every year, MMFC completes twenty to twenty-five medical missions at multiple sites in eleven different countries. Volunteer teams vary from five and fifteen members, and over the course of one to two weeks, care is provided to between 40 and 300 children and families.
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Since 1991, MMFC has launched 520 volunteer missions worldwide, providing surgical, dental, rehabilitative, and nutritional care to over 175,000 children and young adults in fifteen countries. Our singular goal is to provide free care to children with severe congenital facial deformities, tumors of the face and neck, burn injures, dental disease, and malnutrition. The children we are privileged to serve live in the most impoverished corners of the world, and without the commitment of our volunteers, and the generosity of our benefactors, these children would continue to live without any hope of receiving the surgical, dental, and medical care they so desperately need.
Lack of essential hospital infrastructure in Rwanda, Tanzania, and Ukraine necessitated a build-out of operating room facilities prior to the initiation of charity missions in each of these countries. In Tanzania and Rwanda, MMFC installed anesthesia machines, operating room tables and overhead lighting, vital surgical equipment, and state-of-the-art operating room and post-op recovery room monitors at hospitals in Dar es Salaam and Gitwe, respectively. MMFC similarly outfitted three hospitals in Ukraine, with a modern microvascular surgical laboratory assembled at a regional burn center in the city of L’viv. These donations, along with the training of local physicians by MMFC volunteer surgeons and anesthesia staff, allow these medical facilities to extend their scope of care 52 weeks a year.
By way of partnership with the Maharlika Charity Foundation, MMFC has been able to reach destitute communities throughout the Philippines—on the islands of Luzon, Samar, Leyte, Palawan, and at multiple sites in Mindanao. At two separate sites in the Philippines—Angeles City and Davao City—MMFC and Maharlika, working hand in hand, are developing cleft care centers that will provide surgical, rehabilitative, and/or nutritional care twelve months a year.
Members of the Board








Gil Arie, JD, LL.B, LL.M
Partner
Foley Hoag LLP
Wallace Bellamy, DMD
Vice Chair, California Dental Association
Fellow, American College of Dentists
Founder, Fountain Plaza Family Dental
Charles Badaoui, DMD. RPh
MMFC Treasurer,
Founder, Copley Dental Associates,
Assistant Clinical Professor,
Tufts University Dental School
Rafael Barrera, MD
NSLIJ Medical Director,
SICU Northwell Health
Shelagh Cofer, MD
Division Chair, Pediatric Otolaryngology Head and Neck Surgery,
Mayo Clinic.
Shadi Daher, DMD, FICD, FAAOMS
MMFC President, Clinical Assistant Professor,
Boston University School of Dental Medicine,
Boston Medical Center.
Jagdish Dhingra, MD
Director & Partner, ENT Specialists, Inc.
Professor, Tufts School of Medicine
Marc B. Ehrenpreis, MD
Director of Pediatric Anesthesiology,
New York – Presbyterian/Queens
Clinical Assistant Professor of Anesthesiology,
Department of Anesthesiology,
Weill Medical College of Cornell University








Claudia Gilman, J.D.
Founder, Novara Global Consulting
Previous General Council, Boston Scientific
Frank Alfred Nyori, MD
Department of Anesthesia and Critical Care
CCBRT Hospital
Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
Drew Patterson, MD, PhD
Lawson Professor and
Executive Vice Chair of Anesthesiology
University of Nebraska Medical Center
Dennis Snyder, MD, FACS
MMFC Chairman
ENT Specialists, Inc
Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary
Tufts Medical Center / Otolaryngology
Ben Talei, MD
Director, Beverly Hills Center for Plastic Surgery
Advisory Chair, LA County Medical Association
Zahrah Taufique, MD
Pediatric Otolaryngologist
NYU Langone Otolaryngology Associates
Pacifico M. Tuason, MD
Instructor in Anesthesia, Harvard Medical School,
Department of Anesthesia, Critical Care, and Pain Medicine,
Massachusetts General Hospital
Robert F. Ward, MD
Professor of Otolaryngology,
New York University Medical College
Director & Partner, ENT Specialists, Inc
Staff
MMFC is managed by their Board of Directors. The Board of Directors is a body of elected appointed members who jointly oversee the activities of the organization.
Executive Staff
Frank ODonnell, JD MPA
Executive Director
fodonnell@mmfc.org
Kiki Polemenakos
Mission Coordinator
missions@mmfc.org
Professional Services
Nada J. Rizkallah, C.P.A.
NJR Services
n.rizkallah@hotmail.com
Roberta Anslow
Cape Cod Office
Graphic and Web Design
Charity Golf Tournament Director
Philippine Mission
roberta.anslow@gmail.com
robertaanslow.com