Emily Tabor was a single mother to two beautiful girls. One was with a 12-year old named Megan who was born with a cleft.
Emily and Megan know first-hand the tremendous pain and suffering that clefts can cause. Over the years, Megan has undergone many surgeries and struggled with all kinds of complications like seizures, etc.
Because of this connection, Emily, Megan, their family and friends became major Smile Train donors giving hundreds of thousands of dollars.
In addition to very generous financial support, Emily helped Smile Train in many other ways too. Helping to recruit other donors, raising and donating lots of money, speaking at events, even going on trips to visit Smile Train partners in Haiti and other developing countries.
When Emily learned that Charles Wang had taken over her beloved Smile Train and was going to merge it with Operation Smile, she couldn’t believe it. After reading all the details of Wang’s merger plan in The New York Times and how Wang would control $100+ million of Smile Train donations, Emily decided to act.
She created an online petition called Save Smile Train! Her petition was a letter to New York State Attorney general with all the petition signatures demanding that he intervene and stop Wang.
https://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/savesmiletrain/
Her petition went viral and thousands and thousands of Smile Train donors signed it. Many of them demanded Wang be thrown out of Smile Train and some said Wang should be in prison. Emily’s online petition played an important role in stopping the merger.
But she paid a high price.
Wang’s lawyers came after Emily and threatened to sue her. They accused her of stealing Smile Train’s donor list which of course was a lie. But she still had to hire a lawyer at great expense to defend herself.
After Emily hired a good defense lawyer, Wang’s lawyers backed off.
I will always be grateful to Emily for all the support she and her family gave to Smile Train. Without her help, Wang’s merger might very well have succeeded.
And that would have been the end of Smile Train.
Today thanks to Emily and other Smile Train supporters who fought to keep it independent, Smile Train provides free cleft surgery for 100,000 children every single year.
THANK YOU EMILY TABOR.
