With good cause: Wild Dream, an oil on canvas painting by Ha Hung Dung, will be sold at a charity auction held by Operation Smile Viet Nam in HCM City this week.

HCM CITY — Works by several popular artists will go under the hammer at an annual charity dinner in HCM City on Saturday to raise funds for performing cleft palate operations for Vietnamese children, this time in Nghe An Province.

This is for the eighth year that NGO Operation Smile Viet Nam is holding the An Evening of Smiles dinner and auction at the Park Hyatt Saigon Hotel, and this year hopes to raise enough money for reconstructive surgeries for some 500 underprivileged kids.

Three hundred guests will attend and bid on artworks donated by several wellknown artists like Nguyen Ngoc Anh, Le Anh Can, Do Ngoc Cuong, Than Trong Dung, and Ha Hung Dung, as well as by art collectors, designers, and photographers.

Rob Blain, CEO of CBRE, Asia Pacific, who has been supporting Operation Smile since its inception in 2002, will again conduct the auction through the night.

Last year Operation Smile Viet Nam provided surgery and treatment to 2,600 children and young adults, and helped train hundreds of medical professionals and volunteers.

This year it hopes to provide corrective facial surgeries to 2,000 of the estimated 3,000 children born this year with facial deformities including cleft lips and palates.

Operation Smile, a non-profit organisation operating in developing countries, has treated 20,000 children in Viet Nam through local and international surgical missions. — VNS