In Vietnam, even when you’re in a room with air conditioning, you’re soaked with sweat within five minutes. When the temperature’s in the ’90s every day, and even the Vietnamese are telling you that they can’t stand the heat, you know you’re in for it. So, imagine this intense heat and the equally intense accompanying sweat. Imagine unfamiliar sights and sounds all around you – the pandemonium of Saigon, the capital of Vietnam, a major city in Southeast Asia. Maybe you sweat a little bit more in this new unfamiliar territory. With all of this firmly planted in your mind, now imagine performing a surgery on one of the most delicate parts of the human body, the eye, to restore sight to a p

While local nonprofit clinics The Effort and the Health and Life Organization are not as well-known as major hospitals like Sutter Health or UC Davis Medical Center, they each serve tens of thousands of people in Sacramento County and play a major role in health care for the region’s low-income and homeless residents. The Effort and the Health and Life Organization allow patients to pay for medical services on a sliding fee scale. About six community health organizations run 29 clinics in Sacramento County, according to Chris Patterson, a media relations consultant for the Capitol Community Health Network. About 14,000 patients made about 35,000 visits to The Effort’s medical sites last

Professional benefit auctioneer David Sobon raised more than $102,000 for charitable causes in a recent three-day weekend of back-to-back live auctions—defying recent economy-driven declines in charitable contributions that have decimated many Sacrament-area non-profits. Sobon, a partner in Maximum Benefits Auctions, presided at a live auction Friday, Oct. 16, that raised more than $25,000 for Faces of Tomorrow, a Yolo County organization that funds facial surgery for Ecuadoran children with cleft palate. A second live auction Saturday, Oct. 17, raised more than $23,000 for the Woodland Sunrise Rotary’s project to provide cooking stoves for impoverished families in Guatemala; and a third