HARLINGEN — A partnership between Dentists Who Care and Valley Baptist Legacy Foundation continues.
Executive Director Jacqueline Flores announced in a press release that Valley Baptist Legacy Foundation contributed $50,000 to the Dentists Who Care SMILE Voucher Program.
“They are our biggest contributor. They have been supporting us for the past three to four years with our mobile units. They are committed to the work that we do,” Flores said.
Dentists Who Care is a nonprofit charitable organization created in 1996 based out in Weslaco which works to help solve the problem of poor oral health among children in the Rio Grande Valley. According to a press release, it has raised over $11 million in charitable care for over 30,000 children and adults.
“We had a mobile dental unit and the Valley Baptist first grant was over $300,000 for our mobile unit. It would start from Brownsville, dentists would schedule patients for dental care,” Flores said.
The Valley Baptist Legacy Foundation originated in 2011 and is based in Harlingen. It became a grant-making foundation with its first funding year in 2014. The foundation funds innovative projects to assist local nonprofit organizations in addressing healthcare- related needs of the community and residents of the Rio Grande Valley.
“The dentist will be paid $300 for services and do consultation with no charge to the patient. We recently had one of our dentists helping a child with a lot of cavities,” she said.
“We are able to do this thanks to over 200 dentists and their dental assistants who donate their services. And it is all done at no cost to the families, thanks to the support of our community leaders like Valley Baptist Legacy Foundation. Due to COVID-19 we have not been able to treat patients on our mobile dental unit, but with this gift we will be able to redirect patients to a volunteer dentist who will see our patients at his/her office,” said Flores.
