If WiRED created the position of full-time volunteer, it would proudly bestow it on Bess Touma. A volunteer from January 2001 to December 2007, Touma was instrumental in WiRED’s development and worked tirelessly almost full time without pay, according to WiRED founder Dr. Gary Selnow.

Early in 2001, in Leon, Nicaragua, Santiago Castellon opened the Ben Linder café. This small restaurant and bar served organic coffee and healthy meals, but it needed something more to draw in customers. Residents of Leon also needed something more—access to the Internet. So Castellon and his partners decided that the Ben Linder would become a cyber café.

When describing her graphic design career, Ann Britton unpretentiously calls herself lucky—lucky to have a graphic designer visit her junior high class and help illuminate her career path, lucky to get an “in” working with Nike, lucky to have an interesting stable of clients.

Jumping on a plane, Che Pangborn was headed to Croatia for a few weeks of vacation in 1998. Or so he thought. Little did Pangborn know that his first trip outside the United States would turn out to be the stepping stone for his journey into volunteerism with WiRED International, one that would last for several years.

This month, WiRED is honored to welcome the 17th Surgeon General of the United States, Richard H. Carmona, M.D., M.P.H., FACS, to its board.

When Zgjim Limani, M.D. studied medicine at the University of Prishtina in Kosova during a post-war period, the school had to be rebuilt after severe vandalism by outside aggressors and the bombing raid by NATO. The Balkans had been isolated for two decades by the many wars in the area. “This impacted our health system, too,” says Dr. Limani.

WiRED founding board member, Dr. Richard Gilbert, is a World War II veteran who recently enjoyed an all-expense paid trip to Washington, DC. to see the WWII Memorial. Rotarians, who supported the formative work of WiRED in the Balkans and Central America, are sending vets on similar trips to Washington from all over America.

WiRED is pleased to announce the addition of a new board member, Anthony Hodge, who is the retired president of Anthony Hodge & Associates, an executive search firm serving a wide range of industries and functional areas. With more than 30 years of experience in the field, Hodge has focused his work on telecommunications, data communications, financial services, and consumer products.

This month, WiRED launches a special fundraising campaign to renew its successful prevention program in Kenya by refurbishing four Community Health Information Centers (CHICs) in and around Nairobi. WiRED plans to enhance its prevention program in Kenya with new computers and educational material.

Before the WiRED CHIC was set up in Butula, no young person had ever seen a computer, except for those who had traveled out of the village, Mary Makokha told me when we met early this week. “In fact, because of the WiRED CHIC, many young people from Butula decided to go and study IT.”