Meet the 2023 Central Team

Harriet Priest

Head of Communications and Student Support

Hello, I'm Harriet, I am now in my final year of studying Speech and Language Therapy at Birmingham City University. I previously graduated with First Class BA Hons Modern Languages (French, Spanish, and Italian) and MA Translation Studies, both at the University of Birmingham.

In my spare time, I enjoy knitting, yoga, running, and chilling out with my cat and dog!

I am proud to have worked with CLEFT in several roles since 2021: Student Ambassador (including walking a mile blindfolded to fundraise!), Student Deputy Chair for SLT, and now Student Head of Communications and Support. This year, I hope to encourage more SLT, nursing, and psychology students to join our wonderful medical and dental student ambassadors, for a multidisciplinary approach to raising awareness and funds for CLEFT.

I was inspired to get involved with CLEFT as I am passionate about working to reduce health inequalities, and I also have a clinical interest in cleft lip and palate.

Whichever clinical areas I end up working in during my career, I will be dedicated to delivering patient-centred care to the best of my abilities.

Zahra Ahmed

Vice Chair of the Student Section

Hi, I'm Zahra, a fourth-year medical student at University College London (UCL).

I am very interested in pursuing a career in surgery and plastic and CLEFT surgery in particular. CLEFT is a charity I am very passionate about and last year I raised over £200 for CLEFT from the UCL Plastic Surgery Conference I organised, which included a lecture from CLEFT chairman Mr Sommerlad.

In my spare time, I enjoy running and I am currently training for the 2024 London Marathon.

I am really enjoying my new role as vice chair of the CLEFT student section and am looking forward to continuing to fundraise and raise awareness of CLEFT.

Yaqoub Imran

Head of Social Media

Hi, my name is Yaqoub Imran and I’m a 4th year dental student at the University of Birmingham. I have worked with CLEFT in several roles over the past few years including student ambassador, student lead, and now as the head of social media for the central team. It has been a fantastic experience so far and I’m looking forward to continuing my support in raising awareness and funding for CLEFT. In my spare time, I love doing sports such as running, cycling, and football.

Tanzil Rujeedawa

Head of Events

Hi! I’m Tanzil, a final year medic at Cambridge. I’m interested in surgery. I have worked with CLEFT as a student ambassador before. I love what the charity does and wish to contribute in whatever way I can.

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Keeping In Touch

In addition to contacting you with administration information such as when setting up a gift or volunteering, we'd love to keep you posted with our news, activities and how you can help in other ways.We'll never sell or swap your details with anybody else.

For more information see our privacy policy.

We'd love to keep you posted with our news, activities and how you can help in other ways. We'll never sell or swap your details with anybody else. You are free to change your mind at anytime. Please indicate how you would like to hear from us by using the tick boxes below

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Your Privacy

We will always store your personal details securely. We'll use them to provide the service that you have requested, and communicate with you in the way(s) that you have agreed to. Your data may also be used for analysis purposes, to help us provide the best service possible. For full details see our Privacy Policy or contact us on 01245 421901.

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Privacy Policy
At CLEFT, we’re committed to protecting and respecting your privacy. This Policy explains when and why we collect personal information about people who contact us, how we use it, the conditions under which we may disclose it to others and how we keep it secure.
We may change this Policy from time to time so please check this page occasionally to ensure that you’re happy with any changes. By using our website, you’re agreeing to be bound by this Policy.

Any questions regarding this Policy and our privacy practices should be sent by email to [email protected] or by writing to CLEFT, 10a Warren Estate, Lordship Road, Writtle, Chelmsford, Essex CM1 3WT. Alternatively, you can telephone 01245 421901.

Who are we?
We are CLEFT, we support cleft lip and palate teams in poorer countries by working with local surgeons and other specialists to help them develop high quality multidisciplinary cleft centres. We do this by visiting and working with them regularly, helping to provide education and training and donating much needed equipment. Our goal is to help local teams so that children born with clefts in these countries will have the same opportunities as those in the UK.

CLEFT also supports research in the UK which will potentially benefit the much greater number of cleft lip and palate patients in countries other than the UK. Our research projects include a pilot project to develop techniques for 3-D MRI scanning of the palate, a study of the muscles of the soft palate to try to improve the quality of the surgery as well as investigating submucous cleft palate development and therapy.

CLEFT is a registered charity (no. 1119630). The registered address is CLEFT, 10a Warren Estate, Lordship Road, Writtle, Chelmsford, Essex CM1 3WT.

How do we collect information from you?
We may obtain information about you when you contact us about what CLEFT does, register for one of our events, to make a donation or if you register to receive one of our newsletters.

What type of information is collected from you?
The personal information we collect might include your name, address, email address, phone number, and birth date. If you make a donation online or by phone, your card information is not held by us, it is collected by our third party payment processors, who specialise in the secure online capture and processing of credit/debit card transactions, as explained below.

How is your information used?
We may use your information to:
• process a donation that you have made;
• to carry out our obligations arising from any contracts entered into by you and us;
• seek your views or comments on the services we provide;
• notify you of changes to our services;
• send you communications which you have requested and that may be of interest to you. These may include information about campaigns, appeals, other fundraising activities;
• process a grant or job application.

We review our retention periods for personal information on a regular basis. We are legally required to hold some types of information to fulfil our statutory obligations (for example the collection of Gift Aid). We will hold your personal information on our systems for as long as is necessary for the relevant activity, or as long as is set out in any relevant contract you hold with us.

Who has access to your information?
We will not sell or rent your information to third parties.
We will not share your information with third parties for marketing purposes.

Third Party Service Providers working on our behalf: We may pass your information to our third party service providers, agents subcontractors and other associated organisations for the purposes of completing tasks and providing services to you on our behalf (for example to process donations and send you mailings). However, when we use third party service providers, we disclose only the personal information that is necessary to deliver the service and we have a contract in place that requires them to keep your information secure and not to use it for their own direct marketing purposes. Please be reassured that we will not release your information to third parties beyond the CLEFT Network for them to use for their own direct marketing purposes, unless you have requested us to do so, or we are required to do so by law, for example, by a court order or for the purposes of prevention of fraud or other crime.

Third Party Product Providers we work in association with: When you are using our secure online donation pages, your donation is processed by a third party payment processor, who specialises in the secure online capture and processing of credit/debit card transactions. If you have any questions regarding secure transactions, please contact us.

Your choices
You have a choice about whether or not you wish to receive information from us. If you do not want to receive direct marketing communications from us about the vital work we do in other countries and our research here in the UK then you can select your choices by ticking the relevant boxes situated on the form on which we collect your information.

We will not contact you for marketing purposes by email, phone or text message unless you have given your prior consent. We will not contact you for marketing purposes by post if you have indicated that you do not wish to be contacted. You can change your marketing preferences at any time by contacting us by email: [email protected] or telephone on 01245 421901.

How you can access and update your information
The accuracy of your information is important to us. We’re working on ways to make it easier for you to review and correct the information that we hold about you. In the meantime, if you change email address, or any of the other information we hold is inaccurate or out of date, please email us at: [email protected], or write to us at: CLEFT, 10a Warren Estate, Lordship Road, Writtle, Chelmsford, Essex CM1 3WT. Alternatively, you can telephone 01245 421901.
You have the right to ask for a copy of the information CLEFT hold about you.

Security precautions in place to protect the loss, misuse or alteration of your information
Non-sensitive details (your email address etc.) are transmitted normally over the Internet, and this can never be guaranteed to be 100% secure. As a result, while we strive to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee the security of any information you transmit to us, and you do so at your own risk. Once we receive your information, we make our best effort to ensure its security on our systems.

Links to other websites
Our website may contain links to other websites run by other organisations. This privacy policy applies only to our website‚ so we encourage you to read the privacy statements on the other websites you visit. We cannot be responsible for the privacy policies and practices of other sites even if you access them using links from our website.

In addition, if you linked to our website from a third party site, we cannot be responsible for the privacy policies and practices of the owners and operators of that third party site and recommend that you check the policy of that third party site.

16 or Under
We are concerned to protect the privacy of children aged 16 or under. If you are aged 16 or under‚ please get your parent/guardian’s permission beforehand whenever you provide us with personal information.

Review of this Policy
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Latest

EDSA 'Miles for Smiles' 2024

Exciting news! The European Dental Association is teaming up with CLEFT for their 'Miles for Smiles' campaign this year.
Rona, Richard, Jon and Simon ride 100 miles

Join us in raising funds for the CLEFT: Bridging the Gap! CLEFT has 2 great aims: to support sustainable and multidisciplinary cleft care in lower and middle income countries (surgery is important but only part of the journey), and to support research into the causes and provision of cleft care in the UK.
Zhi's Dublin Marathon Fundraiser

I am raising money to provide long-term, sustainable ways to improve cleft care both in the UK and overseas.
Nick and Kathleen's Wedding Fundraiser

We are raising money to provide long-term, sustainable ways to improve cleft care both in the UK and overseas.

Patricia Rorison to represent CLEFT at BLAPRAS Conference

Barts and the London Association of Plastic Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgical Society National Undergraduate Conference 2024 on the 27th January 2024.
Student Events - All You Need to Know!

If you are planning on running a event, either to fundraise or to raise awareness of the work we do, we would love to hear what your plans are so please register your event here. If you'd like to sell tickets on the CLEFT website to your event, advertise on one of CLEFT's social media platforms or order extra merchandise for your event, we can also help you with all that too - find out more here!
New Student Chair: Kaisha Patel

Kaisha will be taking over the role of Chair of the Student Ambassadors section for the 2023/24 academic year. Kaisha has been a student ambassador for CLEFT since 2022.
Links with the British Dental Students' Associations

CLEFT is very proud to have been elected the BDSA’s Chosen Charity for 2021/22. Not only does this mean that CLEFT has been the recipient of a generous donation of just under £3,000 but this new connection also helps spread awareness of the work we do to this important body of students. As possible cleft professionals of the future, we are delighted to forge a relationship with the BDSA.
Share your ideas

Are you bursting with ideas? Do you have some fantastic suggestions of how we can raise funds? If you do, please read further...
Information Booklets

All the information you need about your role as student ambassador and about fundraising can be downloaded from here. Two booklets are available digitally: the 'Student Section Information Booklet' and the 'Student Section Fundraising Booklet'.
Newly elected ambassadors

We ask all our newly elected ambassadors to provide us with a short bio and photo for the website. We'd love to send you a welcome pack with some goodies including a special CLEFT Ambassador t-shirt so please complete your registration process.
Students - we need you!

We are always happy to hear from new students who would like to get involved and help fundraise and raise awareness. Find out more here about how to apply to be a student ambassador and how you can help.

Sheikh Hasina National Institute of Burns and Plastic Surgery

We are working with Bangladeshi specialists at the new Sheikh Hasina National Institute of Burns and Plastic Surgery to create a sustainable centre to treat children with cleft lip and palate.
Nawrin and the C-Arm

This important piece of equipment was supplied by CLEFT and is used to see moving images of the cleft palate. Nawrin is a 13 year old girl who was experiencing speech difficulties and needed the C-Arm to show the cleft team if further surgery was required.
Our mission

CLEFT was established in 2007 with one aim, to help improve the lives of children born with cleft lip and palate, either by funding research into the likely causes of the condition or by helping support teams in lower and middle income countries.
Donate

You can make a one-off donation today or sign up to giving a regular monthly gift. All donations, small or large, will help us to improve the lives of those born with cleft lip and palate both now and in the future. 100% of your donation today will go towards funding an international or research project thanks to a charitable trust covering all our administrative costs until February 2025.
About us

CLEFT was established in 2007 by cleft surgeon Brian Sommerlad - based at Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children, together with a former patient and a patient's grandmother.
The genetics of cleft lip and palate

Investigations into the genetics of cleft lip and palate to understand more about why cleft lip and palate occurs.
Brian Sommerlad, Consultant Plastic Surgeon and Chair of Trustees

For over 40 years, I have been involved in operating on babies, children and adults who have been born with cleft lip and/or palate.
Our research vision

At CLEFT, our vision is of a future where clefts are preventable. Until we get there, we want to improve the lives of those born with cleft lip and palate.
Trusts and Foundations

Today, 1-in-700 babies in the UK are born with a cleft lip and palate, the most common form of birth defect. The impact on a child’s life as they grow is profound. Typically, they will need at least four operations. They may also require ongoing tests, treatment or therapy. It will affect the way they look but also their speech, hearing and dental development. It can leave deep psychological scars.
Our philosophy

The two arms of CLEFT are brought together by our mission to bridge the gap in cleft care and knowledge both in the UK and around the world. Our international and research philosophies are at the very heart of our work.