Profile
Operation Rainbow Canada is a non-profit medical organization based in New Westminster (Vancouver), Canada, that provides reconstructive cleft-lip and cleft-palate surgery for children in developing countries throughout the world.
Operation Rainbow Canada was established in 1998 by Dr. Kimit Rai, an internationally recognized plastic surgeon, and to date has helped nearly 1800 children in Mexico, Lebanon, the Philippines, Cambodia, and India.
ORC missions consist of volunteer medical teams that include health care professionals as well as non-medical support personnel who travel to developing countries where they are hosted by local hospitals. ORC medical teams perform reconstructive surgery for children and young adults whose families could not otherwise afford them. The patients are drawn from the indigenous population of the host country, and often families travel days from their homes in order to have their children treated. In addition to cleft lip and palate surgery, ORC also performs reconstructive surgery for burn and post contractures.
Without corrective surgery, children born with cleft lip and cleft palate deformities are shunned, ostracized, denied schooling, and eventually succumb to a solitary life lived in the protection of their homes. The services provided by ORC transforms the life of each child and their family. It offers them new hope, and opens the door to many opportunities they would have been denied throughout their lives.
In addition to the surgical services ORC performs, they also offer an educational program for Canadian plastic surgery, pediatric, and anesthesiology residents. Through their participation in the missions, these residents not only develop their medical skills, but also cultivate a greater appreciation for the lives and struggles of so many who are less fortunate than themselves. Through their participation in ORC missions, team members develop a greater sense of responsibility to share their skills, and continue to support the work done by ORC as well as countless other medical organizations throughout the world.
As part of each mission, ORC also trains local medical practitioners in the hospitals they visit. Local medical personnel are taught state-of-the-art medical techniques, further enhancing the quality of patient care as well as promoting medical self-sufficiency.
Operation Rainbow Canada depends solely on donors and fundraising to continue to provide these services to underprivileged children. As a result, ORC has developed a number of fundraising initiatives that include an annual Auction and Brunch as well as the ORC Teddy Bear Sponsorship program.
Celebrity personalities who have become involved with ORC fundraisers include former BC Premier Bill Vander Zalm, motivational speaker Peter Legge, Global Television’s Jill Krop, and Gourmet Warehouse’s Carin McSheery.
Today, ORC’s work continues at a prodigious pace. ORC is currently developing a support program with the city of Medan, Indonesia. This program is designed to educate local doctors and teach peri-operative nursing care and treat children with cleft lip and palate deformities. In addition, local doctors will participate in the caring for patients, as well as being involved in the education program.
Through the hard work, dedication and expertise of ORC medical personnel and countless volunteers, the lives of so many children and families have been transformed in unimaginable ways. The touching words of thanks from so many families, and the look of hope in each parent’s eyes has touched the hearts of everyone involved in ORC – and is why we continue this important work.
“A hundred years from now, it will not matter how much money I made, the sort of house I lived in, or the kind of car I drove…only that I made a difference in the life of a child.”
