Last week's Proceedings -

This week we have the 4-Clans Joint Luncheon Meeting with our daughter clubs, the Rotary Club of Hong Kong South led by President Danny Ma,
Rotary Club of Hong Kong North led by President K.C. Oh,
Rotary Club of Hong Kong Harbor led by Acting President Eddie Wong,
together with our grand daughter club, the
Rotary Club of Hong Kong City North led by President Edward Leung,
plus our grand-grand daughter clubs, the
Rotary Club of Causeway Bay led by Acting President Benjamin K.Y. Au, and the
Rotary Club of Bayview Sunshine Hong Kong led by President Teresa Chan.

There were altogether 93 Rotarians and guests attending this warm-hearted fellowship occasion with visiting Rotarians Cindy Chiang and Amy Kwan from RC of Admiralty, and DAG Wendy Mung from RC of Peninsular who together with AG Eddy Wong are designates on behalf of DG Peter to attend our meeting which we felt much honored.

We are also grateful to have our recent speakers, Mr. Francis Chin, Ms Ali Dignan and Mr. Horace Cheung to be our guests today and they are all our potential members too.

Our meeting started early this time from 12.15pm with much more time devoted to fellowship till 1.15pm when President Laurence formally started the meeting.

All Presidents and Acting Presidents of our 4-Clans Rotary Clubs being present today were asked to make a brief announcement of the activities of each of their Clubs. It was immediately followed by a joyful and memorable moment when President K.C. Oh announced Rotarian Chester Chu of RC Hong Kong North being the birthday boy of the day and we all sang the birthday song to greet Chester with a round of applause.

Then came the highlight of the day when our PP Stephen Liu was asked to formally introduce our speaker, Professor Dennis S.C. Lam.

Professor Dennis Lam, amongst his many other honors and scholarships, was "The Most Courteous Doctor" in 1993 & 1994 in the open election by patients of the Prince of Wales Hospital, the Ten Outstanding Young Persons of Hong Kong in 1994 and the Ten Outstanding Young Persons of the World in 1995. He is the founding chairman of the Project Vision Charitable Foundation to establish 100 charity eye centers in China and also the founding chairman of the Action For Vision Eye Foundation. He is also the Professor and Chairman of the Department of Ophthalmology & Visual Sciences and the Associate Dean (External Affairs) of the Faulty of Medicine of the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

The speech of Professor Lam was given under the Topic of "Success and happiness – can you get both?" to inspire us the importance of eye care and how to take good care of our vision. Professor Lam has presented to each of us also some book labels under the title of "Vision Possible" on ideas of how to take care of our vision plus a pamphlet of his "Project Vision" intended to give sight to and light up the eyes of our fellow countrymen in China.

The details of the "Project Vision" are summarized as follows:

Project Vision

-- A New Sustainable Medical Relief Program that Provides Large-scale, High-Quality, Affordable Eye Surgeries to Restore Vision for the Poor and the Needy in China.

Project Vision Charity Foundation targets to set up 100 charity eye centers in China over the next five years to provide quality but affordable eye surgeries to the poor and the needy. Through intensive training and skill transfer to the local medical team, the charity program becomes sustainable as the charity team will never leave.

About 4.5 million people suffer from cataract blindness in China. The number is growing as the 600,000 cataract operations performed are substantially less than the 1,000,000 new cases occurred each year. There are more than 900 million farmers in China and cataract surgery is either not available or not affordable to farmers! A workable solution is to set up charity eye center outside city so that quality but affordable cataract surgery can become available. Through equipment donation, modern management and high-volume surgery, quality cataract surgery can be charged at RMB 700, only about 10% of the fee in the city. The donation is one-off and the fees and charges, although low (but affordable to farmers) will be able to make the program financially viable and sustainable without new donation.

Established in Hong Kong in 2006, the "Project Vision Charitable Foundation" has full blessing from the Chinese Government with Mr. Han Qide (Vice-Chairman of the National People's Congress) and Mr. Gao Qiang (Secretary of Ministry of Health) as honorable president and adviser respectively. The first two centers, one in Inner Mongolia and one in Shaanxi are already up and running.

Project Vision has just get started, much ahead is still uncharted. Let us join hands to light up the eyes of our fellow countrymen!

After a few rounds of enthusiastic questions and answers President Laurence presented some pictures of Professor Lam in action during his speech and a token of appreciation, a traveler's wallet with our Rotary logo, for memory. Then our Rotarian Dr. Tony Loy was asked to formally thank the speaker on behalf of us all.

President Laurence closed the meeting at 2:10 pm by proposing a toast to RI coupled with all the Rotary Clubs who were represented today at the meeting. Few rounds of group photos and more questions and answers with Professor Lam were also taken.

We were glad to have collected a total of HKD 1,500 for our Red Box. There was a total of 18 of our members turned up today to share the fellowship amongst us, our fellow Rotarians and guests of our daughter, grand daughter and grand-grand daughter Clubs – thank you for the many memorable moments of fellowship that we altogether will treasure.

More about The Rotary Foundation

The objective of The Rotary Foundation of Rotary International is the achievement of world understanding and peace through international charitable and educational programmes.

The Rotary Foundation was begun in 1917 by Arch Klumph, sixth international president of Rotary, who convinced a Rotary convention of the need for an endowment for "doing good in the world" in charitable, educational or other avenues of service.

In 1928, The Rotary Foundation was further strengthened by the appointment of the first trustees. In 1931, a declaration of trust was adopted. The Foundation was incorporated in 1983.

At the death of Rotary's founder, Paul Harris, in 1947, Rotarians from around the world made gifts to the Foundation in his memory. The Foundation began its first program in the following year, providing graduate scholarships for study abroad to 18 scholars from seven countries. The figures are now increasing each year.

Contributions to Rotary's Foundation increased dramatically in the 1970s and 1980s. The Foundation now funds each year:

1. approximately 1,000 scholarships for graduate and undergraduate scholars;
2. some 200 Group Study Exchange (400 teams);
3. more than 400 international humanitarian projects through Matching Grants and Health, Hunger and Humanity Grants;
4. grants for University Teachers, to serve in developing nations other than their own;
5. immunization activities to protect million of children against polio;
6. approximately 200 international volunteers providing needed service abroad;
7. one or more Rotary Peace Program meetings.

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Club News

President Laurence Chan hosted an enjoyable Fireside Meeting at his residence in Fairview Park, Yuen Long, New Territories to our members and families on Saturday, lst December 2007(see pictures enclosed). Quite a big number turned up to enjoy the "Basin Food, otherwise known as "Poon Choi" - a most famous combination of all kinds of rich ingredients enjoyed by the local people in the country side.
The children were running around at the garden while members were recalling the old by-gone days of HKIE. There was no fire in the house, but the warm fellowship created a better atmosphere and environment, perhaps due to the soft and hard drinks offered by the host. The curtain was down at around 10.30 p.m. Thank you, Laurence! Let us do it again.