Thanks, Sonali!
One of my friends who lives up in California, Sonali Ranaweera, has a charity of her own, "Recycling4Smiles." She and her brother collect recyclables to sell and raise money for Smile Train. Smile Train provides free surgeries to people with the cleft-palate defect. In the little more than one year that Recycling4Smiles has been active, Sonali and Mano have donated more than $7000 to donate to Smile Train so they can perform surgery on infants with cleft-palate. Each surgery costs Smile Train $250 to perform. Sonali showed me a folder with pictures of the children she'd helped. Some had letters from Smile Train with information on the children's backgrounds and notes from their families that were all really sweet. Her first 20 donations of 2013 were dedicated to the kids who lost their lives in the Sandy Hook school shooting. Aside from her donations to SmileTrain, Sonali has also donated money to Jehan Jacobs, a young boy who was suffering from cancer, to help pay for his expenses. Thankfully, the cancer has now gone into remission. Her next goal is to collect money to buy medicine for cancer parents in Sri Lanka.
We were talking about our charities when I told her about how we couldn't find any place to sell our recyclables in the Dallas metroplex. By the end of the day, Sonali shocked me by giving me a check. Recycling4Smiles had forwarded $250- enough for a whole surgery- to us to pay for shipping.
Thanks, Sonali! With the money, we will be able to ship 20 cubic feet of clothing to Sri Lanka to sell and raise money for food for the poor. You are an amazing, very sweet girl who can put a smile on anyone's face! Good luck with your charity!
~Ranithri, Athena, Neesha, and Shaila
Here's a link to her charity website:
We were talking about our charities when I told her about how we couldn't find any place to sell our recyclables in the Dallas metroplex. By the end of the day, Sonali shocked me by giving me a check. Recycling4Smiles had forwarded $250- enough for a whole surgery- to us to pay for shipping.
Thanks, Sonali! With the money, we will be able to ship 20 cubic feet of clothing to Sri Lanka to sell and raise money for food for the poor. You are an amazing, very sweet girl who can put a smile on anyone's face! Good luck with your charity!
~Ranithri, Athena, Neesha, and Shaila
Here's a link to her charity website: