Volunteers rally to help girl from the grasslands

Volunteers bring 15-year-old ethnic Tibetan Geru Tsomao, who lives in the remote grasslands of Yushu, Qinghai province, to the Plastic Surgery Hospital of Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences in Beijing for cleft palate and lip surgeries in September. YANG FANG/ERIK NILSSON/CHINA DAILY Video:Smiling with the world: A nomadic girl's journey to a new life Trip to Beijing for surgeries transforms teenager's life An ambulance chase. We didn't expect any of this when our volunteer initiative, which I founded in the Yushu quake zone on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau in 2011, brought a second 15-year-old ethnic Tibetan girl from the "planet's third pole" to Beijing for surgery－this time, with the assistance of China Daily's Edgar Snow Newsroom, which made the seemingly impossible possible. Her mother took the girl's sister to start a new family, abandoning Geru Tsomao, who had a severe cleft palate and lip, which severely impeded her speech and caused psychological problems.