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June 19, 2007
Give the Gift of Sight
In some rather exciting personal news, I've recently gotten myself married! I've even got a photo to prove it.
We didn't have the usual gift registry, but instead asked our guests to "give the gift of sight". You see, there are 37 million blind people in the world, and for 75% of those people, that blindness is avoidable. In fact, it only costs around $20 to restore sight to one person! This is the work done by the Fred Hollows Foundation. We asked our guests to donate to the Foundation, as their wedding gift to us. I also gave AU$10,000 myself. I'll probably never meet any of the 400 people who I gave the gift of sight to - but I feel great knowing the impact I'm making.
So, will you help my wife, Evelyn, and I, to celebrate our wedding, and give the Gift of Sight? Just think - you can let a blind person see! To give this gift if you are a FastMail.FM user, in FastMail.FM click "Options" and then "Donate" (in the "Purchases" section, on the right). If you are not a FastMail.FM user, you can donate directly through the Foundation's web-site (if you do this, please choose the option "A Community Fundraiser" when asked "I decided to donate because:", and enter "FastMail" in the "Please Specify" section). We will let you all know how much we raise.
More about Fred Hollows and the Foundation
Fred Hollows was voted one of the top 3 greatest Australians of all time (although he was actually from New Zealand!) He was an ophthalmologist who dedicated his life to helping the blind to see. He started the Fred Hollows Foundation with the mission to develop better and cheaper ways to cure cataract blindness. The Foundation has created labs in countries with low labour costs and trained local doctors, as a result of which they have managed to slash the cost of surgery from over $100 to around $20.
So far, the foundation has helped over a million people, and it operates in 20 countries!
Posted by Jeremy at June 19, 2007 02:45 PM
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Comments
Congratulations!
Posted by: Moshe at June 22, 2007 01:17 PM