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The Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization (IFCO) is a multi-issue national ecumenical agency, which was founded in 1967 to organize and to assist local communities who are organizing around issues of racial, social, and economic justice. The first national foundation directed and controlled by people of color, IFCO has initiated, advised, and given support to hundreds of community-based projects in all regions of the US, and has stimulated progressive social ministry in many local churches. IFCO's work has focused on both domestic and international issues: on civil and human rights, education, housing, and health care; women's rights, farmworkers' rights, Native Americans' rights; sterilization abuse, grand jury abuse; and the support of liberation struggles around the world. Among the tools IFCO has used to fulfill its mission are technical assistance, training, grassroots education, networking, and the creation of new organizing models. IFCO's international work, which began in Africa in the 1970s, has focused on Central America and the Caribbean since the early 1980s. IFCO's project Pastors for Peace was founded in 1988, one day after IFCO's executive director survived a first-hand experience of contra terrorism in Nicaragua. The project was designed to respond to the brutality of that so-called "low-intensity war" with actions based in peaceful resistance. The objective of our first Pastors for Peace caravan was to galvanize direct hands-on solidarity with the victims of US foreign policy in Nicaragua â€" to educate US citizens at the grassroots about the brutality of US policy, and to engage them in actively resisting that policy by sending aid to the Nicaraguan people. The project has grown and generalized; since 1988, we have successfully organized nearly 50 caravans of aid to Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Chiapas (Mexico) and Cuba. In many ways, the culmination of this work has been the series of 16 "Friendshipment" caravans which IFCO/Pastors for Peace has taken to Cuba. These caravans have delivered more than 2300 tons of humanitarian aid to the Cuban people, as a nonviolent direct challenge to the brutal US economic blockade of Cuba. The caravans have also provided an opportunity for numerous US citizens to see Cuba with their own eyes. In addition to the Pastors for Peace/Friendshipment caravans, IFCO organizes study tours, delegations, construction brigades, speaking tours, exchanges, and advocacy projects, all in favor of a more humane US foreign policy in our hemisphere. IFCO is honored to have been chosen to administer the scholarship program for US applicants to the Latin American School of Medicine. IFCO has come to play this role because of its history of prophetic work in solidarity with Cuba; because of its close relationship with members of the Congressional Black Caucus; and because of its historic commitment to support efforts to improve the quality of life in our own nation's poorest and most under-served communities. What are the admissions requirements for the Latin American School of Medicine? Prospective students who wish to be considered for the US scholarship program at the Latin American School of Medicine must be US citizens (with a US passport), under the age of 30, with proficiency in college-level sciences (a minimum of one year each of biology, physics, inorganic chemistry (with lab) and organic chemistry (with lab), and a commitment to practice medicine in low-income and medically under-served communities in the US after graduation. Persons of color and/or persons from low-income backgrounds are especially encouraged to apply. Applicants must submit an application form, personal essay, transcripts, letters of reference, medical history, and other documents. A personal interview is required; MCATs are not required. Applications are screened by IFCO's Medical School Advisory Committee, which is made up of physicians, professors, and other professionals. Selected applicants will be invited to participate in a two-day group orientation program, which serves as an additional step in the screening process. When the Medical School Advisory Committee has made its final recommendations, the files of selected applicants are submitted to the administrators of the Latin American Medical School and the Cuban Ministry of Public Health; they make the final admissions decisions.