"Smile Pinki", A Story That Brought Smile To The Oscars

While all eyes were on "Slumdog Millionaire" for the Oscars in 2009. One little, very courageous girl was also focused on another Indian-based film called "Smile Pinki". A story of young girl named Pinky Sonkar of a village in the Mirzapur District, India who was born with cleft lips. Smile Pinki won the Academy Award in 2009 for the Best Documentary (short subject).

Pinki was born with a Cleft Lip in a poor family who did not have the money for the corrective surgery.
Pinki's father Rajendra Sonkar says: "She used to go to school and the kids would not befriend her. She would say, 'I don't want to go to school'".
Satish Kalra, director of Smile Train's South Asian region, after meeting Pinki said,"Pinki was a depressed, sad, lonely, shy, young little girl, growing up on the periphery of the society in a little village,"
Smile Train is an international organisation that provides free cleft palate surgery to those in need and also provides training to the doctors in the region.

Pinki never realized that this condition required just one simple operation until she got in smile train and she now is a girl full of energy and confidence, and she has a fantastic smile too