The International Medical Corps:
Please Consider This Good Cause

In five and a half years, we've never brought you a pitch for support of a nonprofit. Until now, that is. But the International Medical Corps seemed like the right cause to us to break that streak. The focus of their work is so crucial, and their outreach to blogs so savvy, that I couldn't help but agree to do my tiny part to help out. But I only did so after checking them out on the Charity Navigator, the trusted independent watchdog of charities. It gives them their highest possible rating in this report. I suppose I've been awakened to this issue through the work of the Gates Foundation, which has spotlighted how relatively modest investments in public health and wellness in the Third World can make such tremendous differences there (this 2005 story in the New Yorker, for instance, discussed how a few dollars spent on mosquito nets could cut deaths from malaria by up to half). And Doctors Without Borders has also demonstrated in a vital way how targeted medical attention matters. IMC seems cut from the same cloth. The group is now a finalist in an American Express members project, and a click here could help net their cause an additional $1.5 million. Please give some thought to making a few clicks on their behalf, won't you? And while you're at it, perhaps you might take a look at this group too. We now return you to our regular programming.