Positive optometric action!
This e mail arrived from member Jack Runninger who wrote...
"Thought you might be interested in this email in regard his Sri Lanka volunteering from Australian Dr. Damien Smith, who as most of you know was president of the World Council of Optometrists. He also tells me he will be unable to attend SECO this year.
Subj: Thank your mother for the rabbits.
Date: 2/1/05 2:50:51 PM Eastern Standard Time
From:
dpsmith@werple.net.au
To:
RunningerJ@aol.com
Sent from the Internet (Details)
Dear Jack,
Your book arrived in today's mail and I am already chuckling at what I have read as I just leaf through the pages. It looks great, and I must say I am impressed by its size - such prodigious output.
With respect to the subject title of this email, I thought I would share with you a traditional
Australian greeting/farewell. It signifies absolutely nothing!
Thank you for sending the book, and for the great enjoyment I am to get from reading it. Your personal inscription adds such value to receiving and enjoying it.
I leave for Sri Lanka tomorrow for a week of needs assessment for vision care to Tsunami victims in the northeast of the island. I have been invited to help by the major INGO working with the Tamil population, and I will be assessing makeshift camps holding 850,000 displaced persons. The camps are
'administered' by the Sri Lankan NGO, Red Cross and Medicins sans Frontiers, so I will be setting up some novel but hopefully long term partnerships with
important global organisations. I believe that this will be the first sanctioned Tsunami Aid program by Optometry where our teams are fully supported in-country by infrastructure provided by other NGOs.
On my return, I will invite Brien Holden's organisations to provide the operations side
because he has resources but no place to utilise them.
Again, thanks for the book.
Best wishes,
Damien"
