Transforming the Lives of Children since 1986
INMED Partnerships for Children is a nonprofit international humanitarian development organization that has worked in more than 100 countries to build pathways for vulnerable children, families and communities to achieve well-being and self-reliance. We’re also a top-rated Four Star Charity by Charity Navigator.
Through multisector partnerships and in-country affiliates, INMED builds sustainable systems that deliver innovative approaches to break complex cycles of poverty for current and future generations. INMED’s programs in climate-smart agriculture and aquaponics, nutrition and healthy lifestyles, and youth development have transformed the lives of millions of children and their families. Headquartered in Sterling, VA, INMED has in-country affiliates in Latin America, the Caribbean, southern Africa, and in Loudoun County, VA in the USA.
Founder’s Story
The suffering of children without medical care and a belief in the power of partnerships prompted Dr. Linda Pfeiffer to found INMED in 1986. Originally an acronym for International Medical Services for Health, the name INMED today represents the continuity and evolution that is INMED Partnerships for Children.
Dr. Pfeiffer’s vision for INMED began while completing her doctorate in archaeology and anthropology with a grant from the National Science Foundation. A single mother with a young daughter in tow, she led excavations in a remote fishing village in the mangrove swamps of southern Mexico by day and spent her evenings with indigenous mothers in the village.
The more time Dr. Pfeiffer spent with the villagers, the more she observed that many well-intentioned efforts to deliver medical assistance and supplies from the developed world were causing more harm than good. Shipments often arrived without instructions in the native language or a local network for proper distribution. Dr. Pfeiffer was horrified to find one parent giving her child a hypertension medicine to treat diarrhea.
On her return to the United States, Dr. Pfeiffer determined that partnerships—with the communities served and among nonprofits, businesses and governments—were the key to creating sustainable pathways for disadvantaged children and families to achieve well-being and self-reliance.
INMED is a leader in aggregating pioneering solutions for breaking complex cycles of poverty—from its decade-long Millennium Conference series to its development of award-winning lay home visitation programs to prevent child abuse to its ground-breaking work in aquaponics and adaptive agriculture to its scaling of new technologies to give children a healthy start in life.
Over the years, Dr. Pfeiffer’s vision for INMED Partnerships for Children has transformed the lives of millions of children and their families in more than 100 countries. Her determination to prevent the loss of children at any point along their path to adulthood—whether through poverty, lack of education or opportunity—continues to guide INMED’s work today and inspires the way forward.