IMG’s Leave Your Mark Contest Winners

International Medical Group® (IMG®) kicked off the Leave Your Mark essay contest on June 1, 2017, offering mission organizations the chance to win one of two $5,000 prizes to put toward their global outreach efforts.

To enter, each organization’s group administrator submitted a 500-word essay that answered the question: “If your organization were to win, what would be your human impact?”

After reviewing dozens of essays, our panel of third-party judges selected two winners: Friends Without A Border and New Life Children’s Home (NLCH)!

Friends Without A Border

Friends Without A Border was founded in 1996 with a mission to provide compassionate medical care to children in Southeast Asia. Through its Lao Friends Hospital for Children (the only pediatric hospital in the region), the organization strives to improve and save children’s lives in the Luang Prabang province of Laos.

In its essay, Friends Without A Border detailed how it would use the $5,000 prize:

“In Laos, where one out of 15 children do not reach their first birthday and almost half suffer from stunted growth, a prize of $5,000 from International Medical Group could help us:

• Cover the cost of 300-400 outpatient visits, including pharmacy prescriptions;
• Adopt our operating theater for a full month, covering over 50 life-saving surgeries;
• Sponsor one of our local junior nurses for a year, providing salary and ongoing training; or
• Provide breastfeeding and nutrition support for up to 250 new mothers and their children at our neonatal unit.”

New Life Children’s Home

NLCH was founded in 1976 in Guatemala to help orphaned, abandoned and abused children find refuge. The organization explained in its essay that the $5,000 prize would help in three ways:

• Allow the expansion of its Trauma Competent Care training for teachers at the school and its home staff;
• Fund an additional psychologist to help children overcome the pain and trauma they have experienced;
• Fund efforts to place children in healthy homes through a family reunification program and a foster family program.

Each Leave Your Mark essay was scored on a 100-point scale, allowing a maximum of 25 points for content (relevance of topic), passion (interest in helping others), human impact (social good for community) and completeness (level of detail).

“We are continually impressed and inspired by the work mission organizations do to serve communities across the globe,” said IMG President & CEO Brian Barwick. “I am proud to award the winners of our Leave Your Mark contest $5,000 to continue their admirable efforts. Their actions speak volumes, and we are confident that the prizes will go toward developing sustainable programs that will impact the health and lives of children long into the future.”

IMG has been insuring mission and social good organizations for more than 25 years, providing key benefits and support for thousands of members each year who travel or live internationally to serve others. We launched the Leave Your Mark essay contest as a way to give back to these organizations, and we look forward to sponsoring the contest again in the future.

Thank you to all who participated, and a special thanks to all mission organizations who are truly leaving their mark on communities worldwide.