Humble Sustainability

Healthy habits & lifestyles, developed at a young age, are more sustainable throughout life.

An important and often overlooked aspect of traditional programs is that local non-dental health personnel could deliver much of the basic oral healthcare.

Humble Smile Foundation is committed to developing and strengthening the capacities of such personnel through education and training. The advantages of such a model are that it makes use of existing personnel, it integrates oral health within general health and it has the potential to strengthen the existing local healthcare system. Training-The-Trainers in this way enables sustainability as the trainees become trainers etc.

Interventions must aim to promote and facilitate long-term sustainable improvements, such as tackling upstream factors, and the environment that cause poor oral health and create inequities. Healthy public policies and legislation are important upstream measures to promote oral health, such as legislation to support the implementation of fluoridation programs (water, milk, salt and toothpaste), and healthy diet policy to create a supportive environment that is conducive to oral health. In particular, water fluoridation is one of the most cost-effective public health measures to improve dental health and reduce inequalities. Also, removal of taxes for oral health products is useful to avoid health inequities.

Until now, our funding has been based on a sustainable business model. Any individual or organization that makes the switch and chooses a Humble Brush over a regular hard plastic toothbrush, contributes to the sustainability of Humble Smile’s oral health outreach projects.

We are currently seeking various ways to improve the sustainability of the organization, concentrating particularly on developing partnerships with corporations, philanthropies, foundations, trusts and public funding, while strengthening existing partnerships with our supporters. A new Marketing & Communication plan is in place to grow our network and effectively communicate with our stakeholders.