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The following text is an excerpt from an article titled, "The eBay Way" featured in the 11/29 issue of BusinessWeek. Pierre Omidyar, the founder of eBay, wanted to know the best way to give. He asked, he listened. Here's what he learned...

...Rather than dictating bold prescriptions, then, the nonprofits Omidyar funds flank problems, attacking them from the sides. Consider the story of the toilets. Two years ago, [Dennis] Whittle's GlobalGiving designed a site that allowed anyone, from anywhere in the world who was properly screened and vetted, to post projects for funding. One such group was a slew of schoolteachers in Coimbatore, India. Every year, they watched scores of girls leave school when they hit puberty. And they had a sneaking suspicion as to why.

ONE SIMPLE FIX
The teachers posted a small, bedraggled project on GlobalGiving -- so tiny, in fact, that it initially embarrassed Whittle, who had quit his job as a lead economist at the World Bank to start the nonprofit. The project ad read: "New Toilet Block for School. $5,000." Within a few weeks, four donors from around the U.S., including a writer from New York City and a banker from J.P. Morgan (JPM), put up the money. In less than three months, the school had its own separate toilet block for girls; the donors had thank-you letters and photos from the kids. Turns out the teachers had guessed right: The girls were dropping out in droves because of the embarrassment they felt once they started menstruating and had no private facilities. Now, two years later, 100 of them have stayed in school because of this tiny addition. Within 10 years, GlobalGiving estimates that 440 will have stayed through graduation. And the ripple effect from this one simple fix is huge, given the fact that attaining an education makes it much more likely some of these girls will eventually climb out of poverty...

Resources

• Find your perfect giving opportunity using GlobalGiving's donation wizard
   
• See other Health projects available for funding
   
• See other Indian projects available for funding

By Mary Halpin, Senior Development Officer, SATELLIFE

Doctors in Uganda are fighting some of the world's deadliest diseases with the least available resources including no access to current, reliable health information. Doctors are forced to rely on outdated methods of treatment which cause their patients to suffer and die unnecessarily. For most doctors in Uganda - and for most medical libraries too - current medical journals/resources are unaffordable luxuries.

In its mission to improve access to vital health information, SATELLIFE has proven that handheld computers (or PDAs) are an extremely effective tool for information dissemination, data collection and communication in African health settings.

For this work, SATELLIFE won the Stockholm Challenge Award for Innovation in Health and Technology in 2002 and was named as a 2004 Laureate of the Tech Museum Awards in California.

In 2002, SATELLIFE put PDAs into the hands of doctors as they made their rounds in the rural villages of Uganda. These small but powerful tools transformed the work of the doctors and greatly improved the quality of healthcare provided. After seeing a patient in their home, a half day's walk from the clinic, instead of returning to the clinic to consult an outdated textbook, SATELLIFE provided doctors with the trusted medical resources and health information that they needed to make sound diagnosis and treatment decisions at their patient's bedside.

The words of one of these doctors best illustrates how important these tools are: "One of the best pieces of support technology ever. You are there on your own, and there is no one to ask or textbook to consult. This helps you think through things, and leads you to the drugs you need."

Another doctor stated enthusiastically "The best gift you have given me is the PDA! Everything I need in my practice is here!"

Another doctor highlighted how the PDA supports the isolated, overburdened doctor who is the lone practitioner in a rural village: "With many patients there are so many symptoms and variables, and you can't recognize a pattern. If you look at the PDA references, you can be more concrete. Up country, it is all about clinical judgment and there are no labs. The PDA tools can help you clarify things."'

SATELLIFE and its partner organizations in Uganda will continue to provide doctors and medical students with fully loaded PDAs. Those who receive a PDA from SATELLIFE will have access to a library of information that would be unaffordable and unimaginable for the average doctor in Uganda, with the end result being healthier patients and communities.

Resources

• Read more about "Handheld Computers for Health in Africa"
   
• See more pictures from "Handheld Computers for Health in Africa"

GlobalGiving is pleased to offer an innovative new way to give through an agreement with MissionFish, a non-profit that promotes charitable giving through eBay. An official MissionFish-accredited charity on eBay, GlobalGiving has created its own eBay store where people directly support grass roots projects with the ease of an eBay transaction.

Through the partnership with MissionFish, eBay sellers also have the opportunity to donate proceeds from their sales to GlobalGiving. Please visit GlobalGiving's Mission Fish homepage to view current projects listed on eBay and the wonderful artwork being sold on GlobalGiving's behalf. Among those groups participating is Worldwide Women Artists, an international collective of women artists showing and selling their work online.

Resources

• Go to GlobalGiving's eBay store.
   
• See those sellers on eBay that donate a portion of their proceeds to GlobalGiving projects.