click here to donateAbout Their Projects
These stories are real-life examples of how your actions at The Animal Rescue Site and store are helping our Charitable Partners rescue animals in need. We hope you enjoy learning more about how you and The Fund for Animals , the North Shore Animal League , and the Petfinder.com Foundation are working to make the world a better place for animals!
Update: How YOU Helped Animals in the Philippines
After the great disaster caused by Typhoon Ketsana and the rainfall from Typhoon Parma, the Philippine Islands were flooded. When we put up the call to action, hoping to help the animals who also desperately need rescuing during natural disasters but are all too often overlooked, your response was overwhelming. We thank you, the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) thanks you, and most of all, the many, many animals we saved together thank you. Click "play" to see some of the rescue work you helped make possible.
There are many more opportunities to help animals here and around the world. Click here to learn more.
The Fund for Animals Rounder was born in a backyard rabbitry, one of the thousands across the country that supply local pet shops. These facilities rival the conditions seen in puppy mills, but because they are smaller and scattered, and because rabbits suffer in silence, they operate with impunity. At six weeks of age, Rounder and his siblings were taken to a small pet shop. Rounder was to fulfill the role of a "live toy" for a small child.
Soon, he was left lonely and forgotten. After what seemed a very long time at the child's house, Rounder was once again transported. This time his cage was placed in an open-ended shed. Rounder's new owner opened his cage door and walked away.
Rounder hopped out through the shed doorway and began grazing. For the first time he felt the power in his muscles, the speed of his legs, and the wind blowing his long, floppy ears straight over his back. He would hole up and wait for the other rabbits. Surely there would be other rabbits. But by the third night, no rabbits had appeared.
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Aiding Families & Communities in Crisis
Charity Partners of The Hunger Site
The Hunger Site is proud to be partners with three leading charities that are working hard to end hunger and poverty. Mercy Corps , Feeding America , and Millennium Promise build on your efforts by providing food and resources to those suffering from hunger and poverty in the U.S. and around the world.
When you click daily, the money generated by our site sponsors goes directly to these outstanding organizations to further their efforts in the ongoing battle against hunger. Below is just a small example of how funds from your daily click are helping real people, both in the U.S. and worldwide.
An even wider variety of non-profit partners benefit from The Hunger Site's store. Read their stories!
Mercy Corps: Aceh province, Indonesia
The wider world seems a long way from the rice paddies of Naga Umbang, a quiet village of 395 people backed by thrusting green mountains in Aceh province, at the tip of Indonesia's Sumatra island. But all you have to do is mention food and fuel prices and the winds of a global crisis come rushing in. It's top-of-mind for nearly everyone working these paddies, and even those who used to have a semblance of financial security aren't spared.
Zainbon is a 37-year-old rice farmer with a black baseball cap perched atop her pink headscarf. Her husband mans a desk as a temporary, low-level bureaucrat in the district transportation office nearby, but still they struggle to find the rupiahs each month to get by. She pulls at her scarf, explaining how they stretch six or seven dollars a day across the needs of cooking staples, school fees, fuel and now, in the fall planting season, fertilizer and rice seed. A Mercy Corps survey in the area recently found staple food prices climbing between ten and twenty-five percent, on top of fuel prices that jumped forty percent earlier this year.
"This is hugely important for us — the staples are rising and the salary isn't keeping pace," Zainbon says. "What about others whose husbands are just farming? They're struggling even worse."
This worldwide crisis is striking an area just starting to find its feet again after a vicious cycle of calamity. For decades, a rural separatist conflict kept many farmers out of their rice fields and fruit plantations for fear that they would be caught in the crossfire. Then in 2004, the Asian tsunami sent a wall of water up to thirty feet deep and flattened everything in the area, including the entire village of Naga Umbang.
With the houses now rebuilt, the rice paddies cleared of debris and new water buffalo roaming the yards, villagers are now teaming with Mercy Corps to strengthen their rice farming techniques and improve crop yields. And with food prices bearing down on locals, it couldn't come at a better time.
"We need to modernize," Zainbon said through a translator. "We're already thinking about when Mercy Corps leaves here, and this transfer of knowledge is one way we can build independence. Money from an NGO would go quickly, but knowledge and technology sticks in your mind."
click here to donateMantra Bros Executive Producer Big Daddy G. along with Partner Wicho Phillips presented Gloria Gaynor, Sister Sledge, and Anita Ward at a benefit concert in Panama City Panama recently. The event raised 2.5 Million Dollars for AIDS and Breast Cancer prevention, and support. Pictured from left to right in photos: Wicho Phillips, Gloria Gaynor, Big Daddy G., Aurora Phillips, Julie Maddox, Anita Ward, and Sister Sledge
Mammogram Guidelines
Information About USPSTF's New Mammogram Recommendations
How Do New Recommendations for Breast Cancer Screening Affect You?
New recommendations have been released by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, a government-appointed, independent panel of medical professionals whose recommendations inform decisions by health professionals and insurers. We hope to provide information so that you can make informed decisions about your own health care. Click here to read The Breast Cancer Site's statement.
The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force has released a recommendation that all American women without a family history of breast cancer receive a mammogram every two years between the ages of 50 and 74. The report does not recommend routine screening mammography in women aged 40 to 49 years. Read more here.
Mayo Clinic and the American Cancer Society continue to recommend screenings for women 40 years of age and older. "Mayo Clinic will continue to evaluate new data on mammography and breast cancer detection as information is made available. But at this time...Mayo Clinic physicians feel it is in the best interests of their patients to offer routine screening mammography." Click here to read the the full text of Mayo Clinic's press release (reproduced with permission).
The Breast Cancer Site's Statement:
The Breast Cancer Site, along with the National Cancer Institute, The American Cancer Society, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the American Medical Association, and the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, encourages all women to discuss the risks and benefits of getting a mammogram with their doctors. No one should make this decision for a woman; it should always be her choice when to start screening for breast cancer. Unfortunately, economic barriers too often prevent women who need mammograms from getting them. That is why The Breast Cancer Site supports the National Breast Cancer Foundation's program to provide free mammograms for low-income, uninsured, and working-poor women.
The most recent and comprehensive research on breast cancer detection clearly indicates that regular mammogram screening saves lives, reducing the rate of death from breast cancer by an average of fifteen percent*. The American Cancer Society and Mayo Clinic recommend that all American women begin scheduling routine mammograms starting at age forty. The U.S. Preventative Services Task Force recommends women without a family history of the disease get a mammogram every two years from ages fifty to seventy-four. Although mammograms are most effective for women over fifty and those with a family history of the disease, they can also detect cancers in younger women without family history. Mammography remains the best tool to detect breast cancer before it spreads.
*U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, November 2009
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This is a summary of the USPSTF's recommendations and rationale, and a link to the full report.
Importance Breast cancer is the second-leading cause of cancer death among women in the United States. Widespread use of screening, along with treatment advances in recent years, have been credited with significant reductions in breast cancer mortality.
Detection Mammography, as well as physical examination of the breasts (CBE and BSE), can detect presymptomatic breast cancer. Because of its demonstrated effectiveness in randomized, controlled trials of screening, film mammography is the standard for detecting breast cancer; in 2002, the USPSTF found convincing evidence of its adequate sensitivity and specificity.
Benefits of Detection and Early Intervention There is convincing evidence that screening with film mammography reduces breast cancer mortality, with a greater absolute reduction for women aged 50 to 74 years than for women aged 40 to 49 years. The strongest evidence for the greatest benefit is among women aged 60 to 69 years.
Among women 75 years or older, evidence of benefits of mammography is lacking.
Harms of Detection and Early Intervention The harms resulting from screening for breast cancer include psychological harms, unnecessary imaging tests and biopsies in women without cancer, and inconvenience due to false-positive screening results. Furthermore, one must also consider the harms associated with treatment of cancer that would not become clinically apparent during a woman's lifetime (overdiagnosis), as well as the harms of unnecessary earlier treatment of breast cancer that would have become clinically apparent but would not have shortened a woman's life. Radiation exposure (from radiologic tests), although a minor concern, is also a consideration.
Adequate evidence suggests that the overall harms associated with mammography are moderate for every age group considered, although the main components of the harms shift over time. Although false-positive test results, overdiagnosis, and unnecessary earlier treatment are problems for all age groups, false-positive results are more common for women aged 40 to 49 years, whereas overdiagnosis is a greater concern for women in the older age groups.
The USPSTF has reached the following conclusions: For biennial screening mammography in women aged 40 to 49 years, there is moderate certainty that the net benefit is small. Although the USPSTF recognizes that the benefit of screening seems equivalent for women aged 40 to 49 years and 50 to 59 years, the incidence of breast cancer and the consequences differ. The USPSTF emphasizes the adverse consequences for most women — who will not develop breast cancer — and therefore use the number needed to screen to save 1 life as its metric. By this metric, the USPSTF concludes that there is moderate evidence that the net benefit is small for women aged 40 to 49 years.
For biennial screening mammography in women aged 50 to 74 years, there is moderate certainty that the net benefit is moderate.
For screening mammography in women 75 years or older, evidence is lacking and the balance of benefits and harms cannot be determined.
Read the full USPSTF report here.
click here to donateAbout Their Projects
Helping Children Survive and Thrive
The Child Health Site is proud to be partnered with four nonprofit organizations that are reaching out to some of our most vulnerable world citizens: children. Their proven programs benefit from your actions at The Child Health Site.
Learn more about the work we are achieving together by reading specific project information from our partner organizations below. To be taken directly to the section about the work of any of our partners, click here:
Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation Helen Keller International Mercy Corps Prosthetics Outreach Foundation
Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation www.pedaids.org
Founded in 1988, the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation has a three-star Charity Navigator rating and is dedicated to preventing pediatric HIV infection and eradicating pediatric AIDS through research, advocacy, and prevention and treatment programs. With some 2.3 million children under the age of 15 living with HIV, their work is desperately needed.1
"Every child deserves a lifetime."
—Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation
In 2000, the Foundation established the Call to Action Project to bring simplified regimens for the prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV to families in developing countries. This program represents a cornerstone of the FoundationÂs International Family AIDS Initiatives. As of January of 2007, the Foundation is working in 17 countries and has reached more than 3.2 million women with access to services to prevent transmission of HIV from mothers to babies. More than 2.5 million women have been tested for HIV through their programs.
Helen Keller International www.hki.org
Founded in 1915, Helen Keller International is among the oldest international nonprofit organizations devoted to fighting and treating preventable blindness and malnutrition. HKI has programs in 22 countries around the world. The goal of all HKI programs is to reduce suffering of those without access to needed health or vision care and, ultimately, to help lift people from poverty.
Helen Keller International is committed to preventing and treating primary causes of blindness in children through its proven programs, which include providing vitamin A supplements and facilitating surgeries to reverse trachoma and cataract. According to HKI:
click here to donateThese stories are real-life examples of how your clicks are helping children around the world. We hope you enjoy learning more about how you, Room to Read , and First Book are working to make the world a better place.
Room to Read
Our Mission Room to Read partners with local communities throughout the developing world to establish schools, libraries, and other educational infrastructure. We seek to intervene early in the lives of children in the belief that education is a lifelong gift that empowers people to ultimately improve socioeconomic conditions for their families, communities, countries, and future generations. Through the opportunities that only an education can provide, we strive to break the cycle of poverty, one child at a time.
Books for Children The time has come for more exciting and relevant children's literature in their local languages so that children in the developing world have the same opportunities that many of us had growing up surrounded by children's books, either at home, at school, or in our local public library. Our Local Language Publishing Program provides children with materials that will inspire them to read, to expand their minds, and to develop a lifelong love for reading and learning. Many of the books we publish are bilingual English/local language children's books and are especially beneficial to children because they can be used throughout a child's development.
Building Schools Adequate schools are often scarce in the rural areas of the developing world, a factor that contributes to continuing poverty and lack of economic development. It is not uncommon for young children to walk several hours each way just to attend school. Through our School Room Program, Room to Read partners with local communities to build several types of schools to meet the specific needs of each village and culture. Our model of community ownership produces a deep sense of commitment and a lasting impact on education in rural areas.
To learn more, please visit: Room to Read .
First Book
Since its launch in November 2004, visitors to The Literacy Site have helped generate over 1.6 million new books for children from low-income families. Our non-profit partner First Book helps convert clicks at The Literacy Site into actual books in the hands of children.
In September of 2007, The Literacy Site hosted a Back to School Click Challenge to provide even more books for children in need. Visitors to The Literacy Site rose to the challenge and generated an additional 20,000 brand new books, donated by First Book and Pi Beta Phi, to disadvantaged children in the St. Louis area.
click here to donateThe Rainforest Site is proud to be partnered with four nonprofit land trust organizations that are making important strides in the protection of some of the most majestic and imperiled forests on the planet. Dedicated to identifying habitats in jeopardy and developing creative approaches to protecting them, these leaders in conservation benefit from your actions at The Rainforest Site.
Learn more about the work we are achieving together by reading specific project information from our partner organizations below:
Rainforest2Reef (formerly Friends of Calakmul) Rainforest Conservation Fund The Nature Conservancy World Land Trust-US
Rainforest2Reef (formerly Friends of Calakmul) www.rainforest2reef.org
Founded in 2001, Rainforest2Reef is dedicated to the conservation of jaguars and their habitat, primarily focused on the buffer zone surrounding the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve in southern Mexico. Formed by a small group of scientists and concerned citizens, Rainforest2Reef is committed to reversing the impact of human activities on rainforests, and maintaining the long-term preservation of jaguars and their fragile ecosystem for generations to come.
"Mexico is host to approximately 10% of all plant and animal species in the world."
—Rainforest2Reef
At 1.8 million acres the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve is the second largest protected area in Mexico, and among the few remaining areas in the Americas where jaguars still roam. However, only the core zone of 600,000 acres is protected from human activity by the Mexican government. The other 1.2 million acres remain threatened by logging, illegal hunting, slash and burn agriculture, and development.
Rainforest2Reef's mission is to protect 350,000 acres of threatened jaguar habitat in the buffer zone of the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve. Working with community landowners (called ejidatarios) who live there, they execute conservation contracts in the buffer zone to forbid human disruption. Rainforest2Reef offers the landowners a better economic alternative to deforestation, while simultaneously increasing the long-term protection of jaguar habitat.
