Dear Friends and Supporters,
 
It was beyond everyone’s imagination that we had a successful fund raising dinner on Friday 12 June 2009 for the Vietnam Vision trip. We are overwhelmed by the support from the community. Nearly 800 people attended the dinner and had helped us to raise more than 80 thousand dollars.
 
We are now able to help more than 400 poor people with blindness from cataracts in Vietnam and to buy an operating microscope for use in our trip. During August and early September this year, our volunteers will provide free cataract operations and medical check up for the poor in Thu Duc, Long Thanh and Tay Ninh of Vietnam. The team will later travel to Kampong Thom in Cambodia to do the same work for 200 more poor patients.
 
I wish to thank many people in the community who have donated to our cause. Vietnam Vision has received donations from many states, especially small to large donations from people within the Vietnamese community. All are valuable for the poor. 

The success of the fundraising is the hard work of many volunteers many months before the main event. All had sacrificed their time and work to put up together the program. The Vietnamese Student Association and The Vietnamese Australian Dragon Boat team had helped with reception and selling raffle tickets. Many singers, the Excedo band, Phuong Tim and Bon Phuong Choirs had produced the best entertainment. I wish to make special thanks to Steven and Rachelle, Cameron and Tanaya who gave the audience their beautiful dance floor shows.

Many companies, sponsors have donated gifts for the raffles. Many companies, clubs are our major sponsors. I would like to thank them all for their generous supports to our work.

Dr Son Chau-Vo and Ms Tanya Anhtuan were our Master of Ceremony of the night together with our Auctioneers, Mr Luu Dan and Ms Yen Tuyet have turned the night alive with laugh and emotion. Dr. Tam Tran has produced a very moving video on Vietnam Vision work last year and made many cried.

The people behind the success of the fundraising are our volunteers. They came across the country to our dinner. Dr. Tai Nguyen is from Perth. Dr. Anh Tuan Ngo and MS. Bach Cuc Tran are from Adelaide. Mr Paul Graham is from Burleigh Heads in Queensland. Dr. David Worsnop, Dr. Juliana Chong and Dr. Jenny Carden are from Melbourne. They are together with many volunteers from many trips, have established a sacred bond. That bond is the wish, the willingness to help the poor with blindness from cataracts.

There is a very special group of Cambodian volunteers on the night. They are dedicated business people with Cambodian background to come together and put up their hand to help the poor in Cambodia. There are too many to mention. However, I wish to thank the works of Mr and Mrs David and Alice Lu, Mr and Mrs Ming and Lang Ly, Mr and Mrs Henry and Jenny Ngai. They have worked hard to prepare for the Cambodian work.

I also wish to specially thank to Cheryl Young from Victoria and her friends. They have put up a stall to sell sausages sizzles on Saturday 13/06/2009 to raise fund for us. More than 5000 dollars was received on that day.

Last but not least, there is a leader in each successful event. Dr. Hien Tran has been working with me for many years in various organisations. He is a strategic planner who has put together all ideas to achieve the best results. He has shown his leadership and managerial skills and supervised many tasks to ensure they would carry out smoothly. Without him the fundraising result will be difficult to achieve.

In each successful event, there is always drawback We may have mistake during the dinner, It could be from the beginning to the end of the function, It could be from different aspects of organising from reception to auction, from sitting to selling raffles. The mistakes are unintentional. Please forgive us and help us to improve.

Once again, I just like to say thank you very much. You have made me feel proud of you.

Kind Regards

Dr. Phuoc Vo  OAM
Chairman