OUR STORY



Thank you for visiting our website. We are Smileawi, an organisation dedicated to supporting the oral health services in Malawi. Our story started some years ago after a conversation between one of our trustees and John Challis of the Raven Trust. John was very keen to have someone visit Malawi to assess the dental needs, particularly in the north of the country where the Raven Trust runs many projects.

In September 2012 Nigel and Vicky Milne dropped off their youngest child at university, packed their bags and set off for Malawi. The idea was to look at what dental services were available and see what other help might be needed. After a life changing trip, they returned to Scotland with the realisation that the dental services in Malawi were very poorly supported and that the Malawian Government has many other priorities for healthcare. They found that their colleagues in Malawi were working in incredibly difficult circumstances. They had equipment that was in poor condition and limited access to the drugs and materials required to treat patients. The visit made it clear that there exists a huge manpower shortage.

After some reflection, Nigel and Vicky decided to form Smileawi, initially as part of the Raven Trust but with the eventual plan to become a charity in its own right. In early 2016 Smileawi became a charity and was awarded the charity number SC046434 and so the story continues.

Since 2012 Smileawi have frequently revisited Malawi. They have raised money through generous donations and as a result have now bought enough equipment to run an eight-chair portable clinic which has been taken to many different rural areas. Clinics are set up in classrooms, churches, or existing clinics and through this we have removed thousands of painful teeth for many grateful patients. Over the years they have taken many self-funded volunteers; dentists, dental nurses, and others from all walks of life who have had life changing experiences helping Smileawi with their work.
As an organisation each year our volunteer groups get bigger and bigger and we are attracting not just dental professionals from Scotland but from England, Ireland and in 2019 the Netherlands.

In June 2019 we were joined by a group of fourth year dental students, 5 from the University of Glasgow and one from the University of Dundee and with the help of the public health team from Glasgow University we carried out an oral health survey on around 2500 school children between the ages of 5 and 12 , we were very grateful to the Humble Co who donated enough ecofriendly bamboo toothbrushes that each child who took part in the survey was given a toothbrush. We carried out an oral health presentation including tooth brushing instruction and with the help of a Mzuzu seamstress who fabricated specially designed toothbrush holders for each classroom the children from the 6 schools that took part now have a chance to brush their teeth at school each day. The data showed high levels of caries in Primary School age children.

We have brought together the existing dental professionals from Northern Malawi encouraging them with our help to work together to build a better service for their population. We hold an annual Smileawi conference in Mzuzu which gives the therapists an opportunity to meet up for a day of education and a chance to discuss their individual and common challenges. The conference has grown from strength to strength, we have had well renowned international speakers, representatives from other charities along with members of the Malawian government, medical officers and the Malawian dental association all contributing to making the conference a must for the Malawian dental professionals. We are grateful to Clyde Munro dental group for sponsoring the September 2019 conference.

After a fact finding visit in May 2017 when we visited all the dental therapists in the Northern Region at their places of work to investigate their circumstances, we spent the following months travelling around Scotland and Northern England to collect good quality second hand dental chairs and equipment. In January 2018 we sent a shipping container full of these goods to Malawi and met it in Ekwendeni in May 2018 to oversee its emptying. With the expertise of Gerry Dolan, a dental engineer working at that time for Wrights Cotrell Smileawi was able to provide 8 working dental chairs in 6 different locations, training for the staff to use and maintain the chairs and to vastly improve the working conditions in dental clinics involved.

In March 2017 Smileawi started funding Lusekero Kyumba to study dental therapy at the college of Health Sciences in Lilongwe. Lusekero is a native Malawian who was born in Karonga in 1983, one of seven siblings now married to Mary a nurse at David Gordon Memorial Hospital in Livingstonia with whom he has a daughter Lutengano meaning "Peace", Lusekero has moved almost 500km from home to study and in 2022 when he gained his qualification and completed his internship, he as promised returned to Livingstonia to work as a dental therapist in the hospital clinic. By January 2020 we had another 3 student therapists on our books studying hard to gain good grades and keep up Smileawi standards. In 2024 it is hoped that 13 students will graduate and enter the workforce. This area of work is recognised in Malawi as being of huge importance and is slowly leading to improvements in the dental workforce numbers.
In 2017, Professor Jeremy Bagg of the University of Glasgow, visited Malawi to discuss the feasibility of opening a School of Dentistry. From this visit was born https://themaldentproject.com/ This hugely successful project has resulted in a new Dental School which will be built as part of the Kamuzu University of Health Sciences (KUHeS) with funding from the Scottish Government and the World Bank. Moreover, the Malawian Government produced for the first time in its history an Oral Health Policy and is looking at a variety of projects to help to improve oral health in children. In 2023, Smileawi were involved in the training and data collection for a Malawian National Oral Health Survey and the results showed high levels of disease in 6-year-olds and 12 year olds.

In 2018 we were joined by Alan Stewart a recently retired mechanic and garage owner from Dunoon who came out to look at and repair hospital vehicles that belonged to the mission hospitals we were working from, he managed in a short time to return to service 5 vehicles and set up maintenance and service schedules for the local mechanics. As a result of this great success a branch of Smileawi called the Smileawi Spanners was created on his return and with the hard work of Alan and his crew of enthusiastic mechanics they have sent out a mobile workshop and secured a 3 year sponsorship from Arnold Clark meaning that they will be able to help put back on the road more vehicles which have been unusable for many years. The effect of this work is invaluable and immeasurable and is already saving lives. Smileawi Spanners are making a Mobile Dental Clinic fit for the African roads and it will be sent out in the very near future.

Smileawi has built good working relationships with other charities and projects. Professor Jeremy Bagg of the Maldent project is responsible for bringing us together with Dentaid and Bridge2Aid and we are looking forward to working with these wonderful organisations to meet our combined goals; there are exciting times ahead.
During the Covid 19 pandemic, working closely with Bridge2Aid, the Dental Association of Malawi and ProDental CPD we produced a digital modular course to upskill the dental therapists and to teach them how to teach community members to be Oral Health Promoters (OHP) with the plan that these OHPs can go into the community to teach simple but important oral health messages within their communities. Initially this was piloted in the Northern Region and in 2024/25 it is hoped to rollout the project in the Central and Southern Regions.



Smileawi helping Malawi one tooth at a time.


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