This year, on his annual Pardcast-a-Thon 2010, podcast host Jimmy Pardo raised more than $27,000, which goes to helping Smile Train, a charity whose mission is to correct cleft lip and palates of children in developing countries.
While last year’s charitable haul of more than $16,000 was impressive, adding three hours to his nine-hour podcast helped Pardo handily exceed this year’s goal of $20,000. The podcast, which was held November 26 from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. PT, featured appearances from celebrities.
Pardo and his celeb friends turned out to help Smile Train provide cleft lip and palate repair surgeries to children in developing countries. Due to cleft palates, these children will often have trouble speaking and therefore success socially, at school or in the work force can be increasingly difficult; all it takes to repair many of these cleft lip and palates is just $250 and approximately 45 minutes time, according to Smile Train. Given that this year’s podcast raised more than $27,000, at least 108 children will be able to have the surgery, thanks to Pardo’s efforts.
The procedure itself is fairly straightforward. When repairing a cleft lip, the surgeon pulls together the muscle and skin of the lip and creates the original shape of the mouth and restores muscle function. Cleft palate surgeries are somewhat more involved and require the surgeon to close the separation on the roof of the mouth through making incisions and joining the muscle and tissue flaps inside the mouth.
In 1997, Dr. Ringler and his wife founded the Michigan Chapter of Operation Smile, a similar organization, which provides cleft lip and palate surgeries to children worldwide.
