• On Time Contest Winner
• Artishock Students Return to Forever Smiles
• International Women’s Day
• A Message from Dr. Yan Razdolsky

About 30 young artists from Art Studio “Artishock” came to the Forever Smiles office March 6 for their annual fieldtrip. Children between ages 6 and 12 toured our office, learned about orthodontics and oral health, and Anna Razdolsky shared her first book, “The Smile Team,” with them. Each year Artishock students leave the fieldtrip with an art assignment, and this year was no different. For 2016, we asked these young artists to imagine themselves as book illustrators. They have gone back to the studio and will spend the next several weeks drawing illustrations based on chapters of their choosing.

“We’re giving the students an opportunity to show us how they would have illustrated parts of the story,” Anna says. The artwork will be displayed as an exhibition in the Forever Smiles office in early April. Patients, family, friends and other visitors will be invited to vote on their favorite illustrations. Voting can be done in our office or online.

           Winners will be announced in early June. Stay tuned!

Women around the world contribute to social, economic, cultural and political achievement, but there still is much progress to be made when it comes to equality. Gender parity was the campaign theme for International Women’s Day March 8, and we here at Forever Smiles were proud to sponsor a Chicago event in honor of the holiday. The Moscow Committee of Chicago Sister Cities International hosted Women in Leadership on March 10, in celebration of International Women’s Day. The event featured a reception, dinner and speaker presentations moderated by Aleksandra Efimova, who co-chairs the Moscow Committee of Chicago Sister Cities International and also is the founder of Russian Pointe, a dance apparel company.

Speakers included four women who have distinguished themselves in their respective fields, locally and even internationally in some cases:

• Elena Mossina, partner-in-charge at Sikich, an international tax services company
• Mridu Sekhar, Ph.D, founder of Sidvim, Inc., Chicago Center for Advanced Dentistry
• Natalia Sklyarova-Yurchenko, All Around Gold Medalist at the 1983 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships, and owner and founder of C.I.T.Y. Club Gymnastics Academy
• Natalya Pavchinskaya, IT director at Abbott Laboratories, Cybersecurity Portfolio Management (born in Odessa, Ukraine).

“It was our honor to sponsor and support Aleksandra's very important event,” says Anna Razdolsky, operations manager at Forever Smiles. “We enjoyed meeting very inspiring, motivated speakers and interesting guests.” Anna felt a level of kinship with many of the speakers, as most of them were born and raised in the former Soviet Union and immigrated to the United States as young adults, just as Anna did when she left her native Ukraine in the 1980s. “Many of these women came to America right after high school, and what they have achieved since then is amazing,” she says. Not all of the speakers were strangers to Anna. Natalia Pavchinskaya once was a Forever Smiles patient, and her three sons are part of our patient family today.

My dear patients friends, family and colleagues,

I am very proud to announce that "The Smile Team" is now officially available on www.foreversmilespublishing.com. Please join me to congratulate, the author of this book, and my wife, Anna Razdolsky. She dedicated this book to all of you, so you can Smile Forever and to all those professionals who devoted their lives to create beautiful and healthy smiles. A portion of proceeds will benefit to organizations that help children to have healthy and beautiful smiles!  Please visit www.foreversmilespublishing.com to learn more about the value of oral care and treatment.