Our Mission
To provide free surgical, dental, rehabilitative, and nutritional care to impoverished children and young adults in countries throughout the underdeveloped world, and to establish sustainable centers of surgical care in the communities where we are privileged to serve.
The two most widely recognized metrics of a charitable organization’s fundraising and operational efficiency, as per long established international rating agencies, are:
-The fundraising efficiency ratio, or the ratio of total donations to the expenses incurred in procuring those donations. A charity with a ratio of 4:1 is deemed “highly rated,” and one with a ratio of 6:1 is considered exceptional. MMFC, by conservative measures, has performed at a level of 12:1 or higher every year for the past fifteen plus years.
-The percentage of total donations that go directly to the fulfillment of a charity’s core mission. Year after year, 95 to 97 percent of every donation to MMFC goes directly to the care of the children and families we serve. As MMFC is a 501(c)(3) charitable organization, every donation you make is 100% taxdeductible. Know that the impact of your generosity is beyond measure, as you are helping us care for the world’s most impoverished children…one child at a time.
On behalf of every MMFC volunteer—and all the more from the destitute families that we together care for—THANK YOU.
MMFC Nutrition Program
Currently, MMFC carries out missions at 23 separate sites in eleven countries, and a grim reality that children at each of these sites face is chronic malnutrition.
According to the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation(IHME), a Seattle-based independent health research organization, children with cleft deformities are twice as likely to be malnourished than are otherwise healthy children.
Without early intervention, a child born with a cleft lip and/or cleft palate will fall further and further behind on the growth curve, resulting in a weakened immune system.
Immunocompromised children are at higher risk for wound complications after corrective surgery, and more prone to potentially life-threatening respiratory infections.
IHME estimates that nearly half of all malnutrition-related deaths in children with cleft conditions could be prevented by way of access to adequate nutritional therapy.
In January 2024, MMFC received funding to develop a Nutritional Support Program at our mission sites in Guatemala. This allowed us to provide vital nutritional supplementation to the children we care for, along with an educational program to assist each child’s caregiver.
Our goal is to expand this program into every site MMFC serves in Asia, East Africa, and Latin America.
While the Nutritional Support Program has to date been immensely successful, our vision for its growth—treating between 3000 and 4000 desperately poor children every year— can only happen by way of your generosity, and the commitment of our dedicated volunteers around the world.
Please, help us help them.
MMFC Missions To Date
520
Total Patients Treated
170,000
Worldwide Volunteers
350
What are cleft lip and cleft palate?
Deformities of the lip and palate are, tragically, among the most common birth defects. A cleft lip is a gap between the upper lip and the lower portion of the nose, and a cleft palate is an opening between the roof of the mouth and the entire nasal passage. Both defects occur when the tissues of the middle portion of the face fail to fuse together during the early weeks of prenatal development, and they can present on one side of the face or, worse yet, on both sides. While genetic factors are strongly associated with clefts of the lip and palate, environmental factors—exposure to toxins, malnutrition, and the expectant mother’s use tobacco, alcohol, and certain drugs—play a role in these devastating deformities.
Give Them a Smile
Give Them a Future
We rely on the giving heart of individual donors to complete the twenty to twenty-five charity missions that MMFC commits to carrying out every year. We do not receive, nor have ever received, any form of government support. Members of the MMFC Board of Directors—each of whom serve in a volunteer capacity—have a 100% rate of participation in regards to both fundraising and personal donations.
Every member of every MMFC surgical team participates in fundraising. In addition to giving up vacation time in order to participate on MMFC missions, volunteer team members raise the funds needed to cover his or her individual travel expenses.
Know that the impact of your generosity is beyond measure, as you are helping us care for the world’s most impoverished children…one child at a time.
