Forging the future is the gentle and stepwise leadership of a speech assistant in Mexico who speaks a family’s first language.
We see it when a nutrition counsellor in Zambia supports a baby’s weight gain for better health and safe surgery. It’s the critical nudge of adolescent confidence inspired by a psychosocial support group in Bolivia.
Comprehensive Cleft Care is being built, team by team, in communities that need it most, with each child and family’s experience at the core.
In 2025, Transforming Cleft and our local partners supported 4,035 families across five continents. We also added 5 new local teams to our network.
The future of children affected by cleft lip and palate looks different because of skilled, caring, and dedicated professionals — and because of supporters and donors like you.
Against an increasingly chaotic global backdrop, this report points to hopeful futures in the making. You’ll meet Moses, Elian, Deymar, and Josué, and we invite you to catch a glimpse of a world where every child born with cleft has the sustained support of a trusted local health team.
Thank you for being part of this work.
Our Mission
We partner locally and innovate globally so that children and families in under-resourced communities access Comprehensive Cleft Care
Our Vision
Our vision is for all children affected by cleft lip and palate to experience full rehabilitation and community inclusion with the support of a trusted local health team
A New Partnership:
Continuing Care
The distance between a family and the care their child needs is rarely just geographical. Transforming Cleft’s partnership with Beit-CURE Children’s Hospital in Lusaka is being built to close those gaps.
Moses and his family know that distance all too well — and what it means when someone meets you along the road.
Getting to the Cleft Care Centre from Central Zambia
Moses is a farmer. He now makes charcoal to provide for his family. It’s laborious but more predictable. A lack of rains and the rising cost of fertilizer meant he had to leave farming behind.
In 2016, he and his wife Bertha’s third child, Moses Jr., was born with cleft. Their midwife knew they had to get him to a health centre.
With baby in arms, they climbed on to a transport truck filled with maize. It’s what they could afford, and getting their son care is what mattered most.
At the time, there was no Comprehensive Cleft Care centre in Zambia, so they headed for a volunteer-staffed temporary mission. When they arrived, it was bad news. Treatment wasn’t available for Moses.
On to the capital – another maize truck.
In Lusaka, they learned that Moses was underweight. Surgery wouldn’t be safe. Despairingly, they returned home. Their travel funds were exhausted.
Six years went by. Living with an untreated cleft was challenging for Moses’ health. And the entire family faced community exclusion.
Then, hope. A local Catholic sister had heard about the recently opened Beit-CURE Children’s Hospital. She was going to find a way to support Moses’ transportation.
On the road, 6 years later, again surrounded by maize.
On arrival, there was positive news! The local team could provide the ongoing care he needed.
The next 18 months were focused upon nutrition support, surgery, and speech therapy.
These days, Moses is healthy. He goes to school. He plays soccer with his friends, and when he grows up, he wants to be a driver.
His family feels they are part of the community again.
Full-Circle Cleft Care:
Powered by Local Teams
Cleft is rarely treated with a single surgery. Ongoing care is often required. We want families to be able to overcome the barriers to completing their cleft care journey.
Our Circle of Care shows the support kids born with cleft and their families may need for good health and inclusion in the community.
The future of cleft care is local, multidisciplinary team-based support, closer to home.
2025 by the Numbers
Ongoing Comprehensive Cleft Care
*Global 5 yr. average for supporting a child’s full rehabilitation.
▲ Andry and his family in Northern Madagascar.
▲ From left to right: Sacha and her mom outside her school in Liberia, Costa Rica. Amen, and her father, during a speech therapy appointment in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Saravana and his family, attending a speech session in Chennai, India.
Regional Snapshots
Families Accessing
Comprehensive Cleft Care
Click a country to see families helped and the cleft services they accessed most.
▲ Map: Drawn from UN and other mapping conventions.
Forging the Future
Latin America
In Latin America, social inclusion drives much of our partners’ psychosocial care and parent support work.
Peer support groups are transformative for young people affected by cleft, while parent groups help new families navigate the road ahead — drawing upon others’ lived experience.
Africa
For rural families like Moses’, a single trip to the city can deplete resources. When that happens, care stops.
The future is keeping all families on track.
Europe & Asia
Our partners are innovators, finding solutions to reach and deliver care to families who live far away.
Community partnerships provide a link between our partner cleft centres and the families they serve.
288 families are participating in parent or peer support groups in Latin America
In 2025, we supported over 1,612 journeys to access cleft care across Africa
58 community-based organizations and health professionals help ensure families access cleft care closer to home in Europe and Asia
Forging the Future
Latin America
In Latin America, social inclusion drives much of our partners’ psychosocial care and parent support work.
Peer support groups are transformative for young people affected by cleft, while parent groups help new families navigate the road ahead — drawing upon others’ lived experience.
288 families are participating in parent or peer support groups
For rural families like Moses’, a single trip to the city can deplete resources. When that happens, care stops.
The future is keeping all families on track.
In 2025, we supported over 1,612 journeys to access cleft care across Africa
Europe & Asia
Our partners are innovators, finding solutions to reach and deliver care to families who live far away.
Community partnerships provide a link between our partner cleft centres and the families they serve.
58 community-based organizations and health professionals help ensure families access cleft care closer to home in Europe and Asia
Measuring What Matters to Patients and Families
Comprehensive Cleft Care is about more than clinical outcomes. It’s about how patients and families experience their care, and how it changes their lives.
Dr. Anne Klassen and Dr. Karen Wong-Riff pioneered CLEFT-Q, a Patient-Reported Outcome (PRO) measure that puts the patient and family’s own voice at the centre. Transforming Cleft is proud to co-sponsor innovative global research promoting patient-centred care.
6 TC local partners.
4 continents. 1 shared question:
“What does quality cleft care look like through the eyes of the child experiencing it?”
" Historically, outcomes such as the number of patients treated, or the number of complications, demonstrated care quality.
This project shifts the focus of cleft care onto the patients themselves. It seeks not only to establish outcome evaluation with partners, but also to develop local research capability and infrastructure. "
Dr. Karen Wong-Riff, MD PhD FRCSC
Surgeon-Scientist, Division of Plastic
and Reconstructive Surgery
SickKids, Toronto, Canada
" The CLEFT-Q pilot study gives us direct insight into how our children, adolescents, and young adults perceive the appearance and functionality of their mouths and noses — and, most importantly, their expectations and level of acceptance of their own facial appearance. "
An Early Connection: Elian in Chiapas, Mexico
It is a bright morning in the green hills of Chiapas, Mexico. Sunlight filters through the slats of a one-room wooden cabin, where a small fire burns. Inside, 20-day-old Elian lies nestled on his mother Yolanda’s lap, under the caring gaze of his father, Jacinto.
Elian’s cleft was unanticipated. But the condition was familiar - a cousin had been born with cleft a few years earlier. After the heartbreak of a stillbirth in their most recent pregnancy, they viewed Elian as a blessing. “He was sent to heal our hearts,” they said.
The first days were challenging. Feeding can be especially difficult for newborns with cleft. Tseinan, our local partner, quickly provided nutrition counselling in Tzotzil, the indigenous language of the community.
An early connection with Tseinan – thanks to the cleft team’s community outreach efforts – eased the family’s anxiety, supported Elian’s feeding and growth, and charted a hopeful path toward rehabilitation.
In December, Elian had a successful lip surgery, and a palate surgery is on the horizon. Down the road, a skilled speech therapist will begin working with him so that he can be well-understood by others. Elian’s parents are supported by the team and are committed to his cleft care journey.
Yolanda and Jacinto’s hope for Elian’s future shines through.
▲ Transforming Cleft's Program Director, Courtney Mollenhauer, facilitating an Evidence-Informed workshop for our partner in Thailand, NWDF (Northern Women's Development Foundation).
Local Partner Workshops
▲ Transforming Cleft's Program Manager, Yalexis Barr, with the Fundación Gantz team, Chile, following our Access to Care workshop.
Cleft care works best when professionals collaborate across disciplines, across roles, and across the journey toward full rehabilitation. Transforming Cleft’s in-person workshops bring local teams together to plan, reflect, and shape what comes next: what’s working, what needs attention, and how to measure what really matters.
▲ Transforming Cleft's Program Manager, Yalexis Barr, with the Fundación Gantz team, Chile, following our Access to Care workshop.
The experience of our partners around the world shapes the questions, tools, and learning design of each visit. Our shared objective is clear: grow the depth and breadth of care available to families who need it most.
In 2025, 140 cleft professionals attended 9 team-strengthening workshops across our global partnerships.
▲ The Bugando Medical Centre team, Tanzania, participating in our CLEFT+ workshop, facilitated by Transforming Cleft staff, Hugh Brewster, Andrew Inglis, & Neeti Daftari.
▲ The Bugando Medical Centre team, Tanzania, participating in our CLEFT+ workshop, facilitated by Transforming Cleft staff, Hugh Brewster, Andrew Inglis, & Neeti Daftari.
The Future
of Cleft Care Through Collaboration
The Circle of Cleft Professionals (CoCP) connects cleft care teams across the globe.
Co-founded by Transforming Cleft and supported by 11 NGO sponsors, the CoCP has grown into a network of 1,300+ professionals in over 100 countries — collaborating, learning, and advancing Comprehensive Cleft Care together. Our dedicated digital platform makes global connections possible.
Solutions for
Comprehensive Cleft Care (S4CCC) Virtual Conference
Under the banner of Inclusive Approaches, Lasting Change, the Circle of Cleft Professionals brought together 130+ global leaders to formulate recommendations on the following underexplored topics:
S4CCC Conference Presenters
Under the banner of Inclusive Approaches, Lasting Change, the Circle of Cleft Professionals brought together 130+ global leaders to formulate recommendations on the following underexplored topics:
Click the image below to download
Our Largest
Investment in
Cleft Care
Yet
Last year, Transforming Cleft made our largest investment in cleft care ever.
We are grateful for the trust of the foundations, individual donors, and collaborators who made this possible. It all boils down to enhanced care for families affected by cleft, and progress toward sustainable local systems.
2025 Financial Statements
| Revenue & Expenses | 2025 | 2024 |
|---|
| Revenue | ||
|---|---|---|
| Grants, Donations & Other Income | $2,527,698 | $2,497,646 |
| Expenses | ||
| Cleft Care | $1,287,501 | $1,138,847 |
| Collaborative Learning, Reporting & Skill-building | $767,222 | $715,687 |
| Administration and Fundraising | $364,192 | $342,372 |
| Total | $2,418,915 | $2,196,906 |
| Excess Revenue Over Expenses | $108,783 | $300,740 |
| Revenue | ||
|---|---|---|
| Grants, Donations & Other Income | $2,527,698 | $2,497,646 |
| Expenses | ||
| Cleft Care | $1,287,501 | $1,138,847 |
| Collaborative Learning, Reporting & Skill-building | $767,222 | $715,687 |
| Administration and Fundraising | $364,192 | $342,372 |
| Total | $2,418,915 | $2,196,906 |
| Excess Revenue Over Expenses | $108,783 | $300,740 |
Global
Cleft Care
Our largest program investment translates into deeper work with teams pioneering year-round cleft care for under-resourced families around the world.
▲ Chania from Madagascar has started cleft care and will resume school.
Our Promise
100% of your donation goes to our cleft care programs
How? A private charitable foundation generously covers our administrative and fundraising costs — giving us confidence to stretch and innovate as we help shape the future of cleft care.
Because
of You
Deymar and Josué are two Bolivian boys whose futures are being transformed by skilled, dedicated local cleft care teams.
Because of You tells this story — and we’d love for you to catch a glimpse through this video.
Transforming Cleft and our partners are rallying for children and families in under-resourced communities to access Comprehensive Cleft Care.
You’ve already met Moses and Elian. They, along with Deymar and Josué, are forging a bright and hopeful future.
With Gratitude
We are grateful to our local partners, board members, advisors, and staff who make important contributions to Comprehensive Cleft Care.
Forging
the Future:
It’s Better with You
We invite you to support our work in forging the future of cleft care. It makes a real difference!
Give Online
Give Offline
Via cheque or by giving us a call
416-222-6581
637 College St., Suite 203
Toronto, ON, M6G 1B5
Cleft is a journey for children and their families.
The Journeymakers monthly giving community is with them for the long haul.
Transforming Cleft welcomes partnerships with foundations interested in advancing full rehabilitation for children with cleft lip and palate.
To discuss grant opportunities, please contact:
Kristian Wykes
Senior Manager,
Communications & Engagement
kristian@transformingcleft.org
637 College St., Suite 203
Toronto, ON, M6G 1B5
1-416-222-6581
info@transformingcleft.org
transformingcleft.org
© 2026 Transforming Cleft
Charitable Registration # 86720 4034 RR0001
Edited by Kristian Wykes and designed by Sergio Rebolledo.