Mission and Approach
Founded in 1984 by volunteer doctors and nurses, International Medical Corps is a private, voluntary, nonpolitical, nonsectarian organization that works to improve the quality of life through health interventions and related activities that build local capacity in under served communities worldwide.
International Medical Corps provides life-saving relief while building self-reliance through programs that focus on education and training. As a result of this approach, approximately 96% of its field-based staff and health professionals are recruited from the local community, helping ensure that the skills stay within the area long after the program has ended.
The emphasis on capacity building through education and training is central to all International Medical Corps programs. Its central program priorities include: emergency response; health capacity building; women’s and children’s health and wellbeing; mental health; and clean water, sanitation, and hygiene. In addition to these priorities, International Medical Corps also runs programs providing nutrition services, economic and agricultural livelihoods support, and prevention, testing, and care for communicable diseases like HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria.
International Medical Corps is also a founding member of the ONE campaign and part of the Clinton Global Initiative. Ninety-two cents of every dollar goes directly to its field programs – one of the highest fundraising efficiencies in the industry – and International Medical Corps is an A+ rated charity by the American Institute of Philanthropy and a BBB accredited charity.
In 2002 International Medical Corps UK was founded to create the global International Medical Corps partnership, designed to maximise the resources and expertise available to our staff on the ground. International Medical Corps UK is responsible for managing European and UN funded programmes as well as providing technical advice, recruitment, raising awareness, and contributing to UK & European policy development.
Read more about this topic: International Medical Corps
Famous quotes containing the words mission and, mission and/or approach:
“Man is eminently a storyteller. His search for a purpose, a cause, an ideal, a mission and the like is largely a search for a plot and a pattern in the development of his life story—a story that is basically without meaning or pattern.”
—Eric Hoffer (1902–1983)
“I am succeeding quite well in my work and the future looks well. What special mission is God preparing me for? Cutting off all earthly ties and isolating me as it were.”
—Ellen Henrietta Swallow Richards (1842–1911)
“The white man regards the universe as a gigantic machine hurtling through time and space to its final destruction: individuals in it are but tiny organisms with private lives that lead to private deaths: personal power, success and fame are the absolute measures of values, the things to live for. This outlook on life divides the universe into a host of individual little entities which cannot help being in constant conflict thereby hastening the approach of the hour of their final destruction.”
—Policy statement, 1944, of the Youth League of the African National Congress. pt. 2, ch. 4, Fatima Meer, Higher than Hope (1988)