Rochester, N.Y. - Jonathan has bright brown eyes and a lopsided grin.  But his wool hat hides a secret.  The 6-year-old is missing an ear.

A Rochester surgeon wants to make him a new one.

“The ears are complex,” says Dr. Vito Quatela of the Quatela Center for Plastic Surgery on East Avenue.  ‘You have to take a rib cartilage out of the chest and carve it into the shape of the ear.”

Dr. Quatela met Jonathan on a trip to Ecuador where he goes to seek out children nicknamed “cups.”   They are children born with severe ear deformities.  Children here are six times more likely to have the condition called microtia than they are here in the United States.

The deformity itself is not physically life-threatening, but cultural reaction to it in some countries, can be.  “The deformity causes them to be ostracized from society,” explains Dr. Quatela.  “Most of them don’t come to us with their parents they have a history of where they may have been thrown out, rescued from a dumpster.”

It takes two or three procedures over as many years to surgically correct the deformity.  For 10 years now surgeons, nurses and medical technicians – all volunteers – have been changing the lives of children in some of the world’s poorest countries.

“When I go there I don’t think of how I’m enhancing the appearance of this child.  I know I’m giving them a second chance on life,” says Dr. Quatela.

He has a photo album filled with children wearing bandages around their heads, each child also wearing a big smile.  There are other photos of smiling mothers and grandmothers.

“It’s very touching,” says Dr. Quatela.  “We all come back energized to do our daily work and it gives us a different perspective.”

In these faces of gratitude the effort has found both its purpose and a name.  “Help Us Give Smiles” or HUGS for short.  The foundation runs on donations and volunteers and has whittled the cost per surgery to about $250.

HUGS holds a major fundraiser once a year, a Valentine’s Gala.  The website has more information about the event and about the children http://helpusgivesmiles.org/.