International honours for Foresight board members

April 2011: Asia Pacific Academy of Ophthalmology (APAO) presents Foresight board members Professor Frank Billson and Dr Geoffery Painter with distinguished awards in leadership and service

…and congratulations to another

Congratulations to Board member Professor Ron McCallum on 2 counts.

• He has been named Senior Australian of the Year 2011
• He has been re-elected as Chair of the United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, for two more years — until February–March 2014.

Foresight’s Project Officer in the Solomon Islands

Read about Foresight’s John Hue in the Vision 2020 newsletter.

Appeal to help break the cycle of poverty and blindness for Cambodian children

Sadly, since last Christmas more than half a million children have needlessly become blind. Poverty is both a cause and consequence of their blindness.

We now invite you to share in a special opportunity…to transform a child’s life with the gift of sight.

Children abandoned to the Scrap Heap in Cambodia

At the notorious Phnom Penh garbage dump, our colleague Scott Neeson has created a life-giving centre through his Cambodian Children’s Fund. He has rescued over 500 child scavengers and provided them and their impoverished community with life-transforming opportunities of education, health services and work.

Scott invited Foresight to add a medical eye service to his newly built community medical clinic — the only health service this community has. Foresight will provide a facility to screen adults but importantly add the structure, equipment and local training to assess visual development of children. We will train, empower and mentor local staff to identify and respond to eye disease, especially in babies and these young children. But we urgently need your help.

Please join us in making this dream a reality and break the cycle of poverty and blindness.

(During a research trip to Cambodia in June 2008, Foresight Director, Frank Billson visited the Cambodian Children’s Fund facilities in Phnom Penh. To learn more about the Cambodian Children's Fund click here.

Australian eye health consortium saving sight throughout the Asia Pacific

In an historic first, Australian eye health and vision care organisations have united to form the Vision 2020 Australia Global Consortium with the aim of eliminating avoidable blindness and reducing the impact of vision loss throughout South East Asia and the Pacific over the next 10 years.

In the 2008 federal budget, the Australian Government pledged $45 million towards this goal. Members of the Global Consortium have received funding to deliver eye health and vision care programs across South East Asia and the Pacific over the next two years.

Foresight Australia is on the steering committee of the Consortium and has been chosen as the lead agency to roll out programs in the Solomon Islands.

Coordinated by Vision 2020 Australia, the 9 Consortium members are:

• CBM Australia
• Centre for Eye Research Australia (CERA)
• Foresight
• International Centre for Eyecare Education (ICEE)
• Royal Australasian College of Surgeons (RACS)
• Royal Institute for Deaf and Blind Children
• The Fred Hollows Foundation (FHF)
• The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Ophthalmologists
• Vision Australia.