Via Baghdad Burning: Raed and Khalid (of Raed in the Middle and Secrets in Baghdad, respectively) are trying to step in to the gap left by the withdrawal from Iraq of a great many NGOs and aid agencies:

“The Jarrars” (i.e. me and my family), decided to start a small individual humanitarian campaign for a month (maybe we’ll extend it) for buying basic things like some medical stuff, food, blankets, and other necessities and send them directly to hospitals in the most affected cities and towns. We will try our best to work under the supervision of one of the few functioning NGOs in Iraq (e.g. Occupation Watch, or others) to give more transparency to this small campaign, but over all the working plan is as follows:
*Money will be donated through PAYPAL to my account, (Jarrar_raed@hotmail.com), and will be reported on my blog frequently.
*My brother Majid will collect the money from Victoria in Canada and wire it to me in Jordan through my bank account.
*I will buy everything from Jordan, and publish the receipts on my blog.
*Then I will send things to my family in Baghdad, where they will send it in turn to hospitals depending on the priority and accessibility of the towns and cities.
*We will get official papers from the hospitals to insure they received the certain amount of supplements; we will publish them on our blogs too.
*We’ll publish a financial break down at the end of the month (end of Nov.)

You can send money from your credit cards too; even small amounts of money can do much in Iraq.

(Raed's post is here.) This appeals to me because:

• it's transparent: they plan to publish all the information you could want about where the money went
  
• it's direct: between Khalid right there in Baghdad and the NGO/s with whom they liaise, I feel confident that the help will go where it's needed.

Please consider making a donation.

(For those who, for whatever reason, are uncomfortable supporting the Jarrars, the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq maintains a web portal for UN agencies and NGOs working in Iraq. In conjunction with the Humanitarian Information Center for Iraq (an initiative of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs), they maintain databases of who is doing what where and contact details for humanitarian interventions in Iraq.)