I am a WiRED Board member...a founding member. We work like crazy, as volunteers, to provide health and medical education to those most in need. We have grown in leaps and bounds and have partnered with organizations that are like minded to serve the poorest, the most unfortunate, those without access to health care, information, clean water, electricity, etc. We now have over 300 health/medical education modules that we provide free of charge to those in need and to other NGO's serving those in need. The money we raise goes to our projects, not to salaries. We have effectively managed volunteers in all aspects of health/medical education to donate their talents in service to those who need them. We have done research on the efficacy of our programs and the results are excellent. You can read about our projects and research on our website www.wiredinternational.org or in various journals. Our other board members include Richard Carmona, former surgeon general; David Alberts, retired Director of the Arizona Cancer Center, Charlotte Feretti, Director, Edelman Institute at SFSU, and many others.

This group does amazing work on a shoestring budget. They bring life-saving medical information to war-torn and developing areas of the world. Using telecommunications they link doctors to doctors and offer consulting services. It's a group that does an enormous amount of good with limited resources.

I worked as a US contractor in Iraq for a number of years. Although Wired did attempt to establish a presence in Iraq, their claims (which remain on their website) of having any working sites there are greatly exaggerated. At best, they installed some outdated computer equipment that regularly crashed, and they provided no sustainability, leaving those of us who actually stayed in the country facing the anger of medical students and doctors in numerous locations. Furthermore, they attempted to use their connections with the Bush Administration to divert funds from primary care programs for Iraqi women and children to support complex and expensive telecommunications systems that they had promised to the Iraqi government and failed to deliver on. The USAID country director was able to stop them, but it resulted in a major hit on her career. Bottom line is well meaning, but misguided techie folks with no understanding of how to implement development projects in poor countries. Negative impact on other US NGOs is a big minus to any pluses they may bring. Minus two starts for that. Also, for a techie non-profit, you would think that they would update their website to reflect reality now and then. Self hype is another star loser.