Hope Smiles was founded by Dr. Phillip Kemp in 2005 to meet unmet dental needs and provide dental students unparalleled mentorship and experience while serving people who don’t have access to quality dental care. From the beginning, we set out to make sure that everything we do is based on empathy for people and developing deep, meaningful, long-lasting relationships through our work.

Starting in our early days, we have been in partnership with the University of Tennessee and Meharry Medical College — providing mentoring and leadership development opportunities for dental students.

In 2013, we began supporting the work that Dr. Ryan Shinska was called to. This developed into several short-term trips and eventually a long-term partnership which led to a sustainable model that we continue to build upon today.

Our mission is to restore hope and transform lives through dentistry. More importantly, through this work, we cultivate relationships, develop connections, and build communities so that people can belong to something greater than themselves.

Through our mobile outreaches, dental clinics, and leadership development programs in Uganda, we established a model where we train and develop dental professionals who provide emergent and restorative dental care that serves people who cannot access or afford high-quality dental services.

With the support of people like you, we will continue to expand our work of restoring smiles and awakening hearts.