Jane Kaczmarek is no stranger to doing good things.
The Malcolm in the Middle star co-founded Clothes Off Our Back, which auctions off celebrity swag, clothing, costumes and memorabilia for charity. She’s a big supporter of Heifer International and speaks proudly of the sponsored water buffalo she received from Fox each year during Malcolm’s seven-year run: “I bet I’m the only actress who got livestock for her birthday,” she says with that familiar Malcolm-mom laugh.
But this holiday season, Kaczmarek has a new good reason to smile: Just before Thanksgiving, she traveled to India with Smile Train to witness with her own eyes — and heart — the life-changing surgeries the group brings to tens of thousands of children with cleft lips and palates each year.
“You see that these are real people,” says Kaczmarek, who had supported Smile Train and served as a spokesperson for the group for a few years, but had never seen their work up close until now. “These aren’t statistics. These aren’t the photographs you see in the New York Times.”
“When you see a husband and wife holding a baby, and the love they have for this child — I didn’t expect that,” she says.
Exposed to some of the most poverty stricken areas of India during her trip, Kaczmarek was surprised to see tightly knit families at every turn. “In poverty stricken areas in the U.S., father’s often are not present. [In India] these family units are so intact. I never saw a child without a husband, or uncle, or brother present. The care, the tenderness with which they treated each other — it was very moving.”
One little girl Kaczmarek met (photo above) suffered from an extremely rare cleft condition: Her nose was flat, and her nostrils moved toward each side of her face, creating a situation in which her brain had descended to the top of her mouth—a condition that would require neurosurgery before Smile Train could work their magic.
“This mother loved this baby, and this father — when the baby was being examined, the father looked at me, and he took his hand and put it over his heart, and then took his hand and gestured down to his baby,” Kaczmarek recalls. “He broke into the biggest smile and nodded his head with such pride, that this little tiny thing was his child, and he was so proud that this was his child. I will never forget that image of an intact family, this husband and wife, and this little baby that had such challenges ahead.”
She also followed a girl named Radha through surgery from beginning to end, and was in the room as she awoke from her anesthesia, crying and crying until she caught sight of her grandmother and suddenly stopped. “The grandmother hugged me, and hugged her — they’re so grateful. They never expect anyone to ever give them anything, and this is just a miracle to them. That some stranger would help them.”
That emotional scene plays out as many as 50,000 times a year through Smile Train’s work. It’s astonishing to realize that just $250 US Dollars provides the entire life-changing surgery, including five days in one of 170 Smile Train hospitals in India.
“Smile train turns no one away,” Kaczmarek says. “Everyone who comes with a cleft or a lip or a palate is operated on, and completely free.”
In one day during her visit, some 300 children showed up looking for help. Some had walked with their families for days. Others came by bus or by train. And every one of them was put onto a schedule for surgery.
“The poverty in India — you’ve just never seen anything like this in your life. And you don’t stop seeing it,” Kaczmarek notes. “There’s no welfare, no social security — so to try to convince people that we will fix your child’s face free of charge took some convincing!”
It didn’t take long, though, to convince Kaczmarek to fall in love with the people of India. “It’s grinding poverty, but it’s very different,” she adds. “The people have a dignity about them,” in part, she says, because of “the caste system and karma: It’s only by being a good person and doing good work that you will come back in a new position.”
If you ask us here at Tonic, we’d say Kaczmarek’s own karma is looking pretty good these days. And she hopes that by sharing her experience, and photos, others will be inspired to open up and donate their time or money to Smile Train this holiday season as well.
“Any amount makes such a difference,” she notes, reiterating the fact that “$250 will fix a palate.”
“You are literally giving a child a new life,” she says. “These are kids that would be unable to make it through childhood who now can go to school, get a job.”
As a real-life mom, ”I’m able to give another mother a chance to see her child smile,” she adds. “The thought that your kid can make a friend? It’s so basic.”
Look at the pictures. Think it through. “These kids can’t suckle, can’t create a vacuum to suck milk. And when they’re fed with spoons or with cups, children are often underweight and malnourished because you can’t feed them properly,” Kaczmarek notes. “Deafness happens because the sinuses drain into the ears, and multiple infections cause deafness. There are some with cleft palates, but not cleft lips, who look normal but don’t speak properly… and Smile Train helps all of them. They are just a remarkable group.”
Take it from a seven-year-straight Emmy Nominated actress: “Nothing feels as good as helping children in need. Nothing. This has spoken to me in life more than any acclaim I ever got in acting. And I enjoy acting. I don’t mean to put it down. But I am at a different point in my life,” Kaczmarek says, “and this is giving me a great sense of satisfaction now.”
To learn more about Smile Train, or to make a donation to change a child’s life, CLICK HERE.
Photos Courtesy Smile Train