While watching the Sunday morning talk shows last week I happened upon one that focused on global poverty. The general thrust of the discussion was the fact that societies cannot develop in any aspect – educationally, socially, economically, even the provision of basic human rights protections – until the people’s basic needs are met. By that we mean food, clean water, shelter and the control of disease. You can’t even develop a religion until these basic needs are met.

Hearing that on a national television broadcast just re-affirmed the whole purpose of our foundation. Then I went to church and the topic of discussion was the exact same thing.

Those of us fortunate enough to live in societies with abundant wealth simply must do more and give more and be of service to societies in extreme poverty. We have to give them the capacity by which they can begin to meet their own basic needs. If you don’t have the capacity to physically go and do it, you have a moral obligation to give of what you have, and that includes money.

More than 25,000 children die every day around the world. That is equivalent to:

• One child dying every 3.5 seconds
• 17 children dying every minute
• A 2004 Asian Tsunami occurring almost every week and a half
• More than 9 million children dying a year.

The silent killers are poverty, hunger, easily preventable diseases and illnesses, and other related causes. In spite of the scale of this daily/ongoing catastrophe, it rarely manages to achieve, much less sustain, prime-time, headline coverage, despite last Sunday’s exception.

One way to contribute is to attend the fundraiser for the One5 Foundation on Nov. 19 at Boulevard Brewing Co., 2501 Southwest Blvd. in Kansas City. For your $200 donation you will have a very fun night of food, drink and music of the Emerald City Band.

There’s room for only a limited number of people, so contact us through our Web site, www.one5.org, or call 913-647-6442 to reserve your place.

We want to give you advance notice of a very special and fun event coming up.

The Emerald City Band, a very entertaining group, will play Nov. 19 at Boulevard Brewing Co., 2501 Southwest Blvd. in Kansas City, as a fundraiser for the One5 Foundation. For your $200 donation you will have a very fun night of food, drink and music.

Plus, you can have the satisfaction of knowing that 100 percent of your donation will go toward One5 Foundation activities to help rid the world of the five deadliest children’s diseases. All overhead and administrative costs will be covered by sponsors.

There’s room for only a limited number of people, so contact us through our Web site or call 913-647-6442 to reserve your place.

This will be a visible way to kick off the new name for the One5 Foundation, (formerly Integral Life Foundation) and to raise awareness about childhood diseases in the developing world.

In partnership with Nueterra Capital Management and the C3 Missions International, One5 Foundation is committed to making a difference in developing nations through the C3/NCM Global Growth Fund. By our definition, good health is the cornerstone of economic development. We support investment in countries that have already shown a commitment to taking steps to do their part in improving the health of its citizens. A systemic approach to global health, grounded in good policies, provides the best medicine for delivering tangible and sustainable results that will improve the quality of life for the world’s poor and with special emphasis to prevent the five greatest killers of children around the world:  malaria, measles, respiratory infections, diarrhea and HIV/AIDs.

Nueterra Healthcare employees support the foundation in a variety of ways and help carry its message to our physician partners, vendors and other who work with the company. In addition, medical staffs and other employees all have skills the foundation uses to help fight poverty and disease directly in the field and via telemedicine.

The One5 Foundation sponsors several trips abroad each year to provide health care services, provide clean water and education. One group recently returned from a health care trip to Haiti. Another group is currently conducting research in order to open a clinic in Malawi.

Here are some statistics reflecting the efforts that our Integral Life Foundation group made during its health care visit to Haiti two weeks ago:

• We visited seven orphanages.
• The medical team assessed and treated approximately 600 children.
• We distributed 600 mosquito nets to the orphanages and hung about 300 of them.
• We cleaned and disinfected 300 mattresses and then wrapped them in plastic.

We returned to Kansas City last week, tired but with a feeling that we had done some good and made a difference that will help make those young lives somewhat brighter.

It was very exciting to see that our clinic is virtually built in Les Cayes, a metropolitan area in south Haiti located near an orphanage and a church. The clinic creates sort of an economic engine in the area. The residents are used to missionaries and medical teams visiting there and they line up for the doctors.

The clinic will be used as the base of operations to provide healthcare for orphans. This will become more evident as we bring more medical teams from the U.S. and as we begin to employ Haitian physicians.

The first chapter of the story is complete, along with the physical shell of the building. Now it needs to be equipped with standard medical office supplies, dental equipment and imaging apparatus.  There is not a single CT scan nor MRI machine in the entire southern region.

As U.S. citizens we don’t think twice about receiving basic medical care, and that is exactly what is needed in south Haiti, where children routinely go without immunizations for measles and malaria and care for HIV AIDS.

So when seven volunteers come from the U.S. to help, the results are tangible.