Lien Trinh was our last guest speaker. She holds a Bachelor of Optometry from the University of Melbourne, Master of Optometry from the University of NSW, and Master of Public Health from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. She has experience working in a variety of low-income settings internationally and throughout Australia, providing eye-care services as well as building local eye personnel capacity through teaching, research and evaluation.
There are quotes of her personal driver that she "wants to live in a world where avoidable forms of vision impairment don’t exist, where individuals are empowered, and human diversity is celebrated".
Appropriately then Lien is currently engaged by the Rotary Club of Melbourne to coordinate their End Trachoma by 2020 campaign and provide that technical expertise necessary. As such her address gave an account of that and some experiences and issues which have arisen. This project is personally endorsed by RI President Ian Riseley.
She also works with the Welcome Dinner Project; an initiative connecting those newly arrived to Australia with established Australians. In and around Melbourne, this project aims to improve social cohesion and strengthen the community by providing an opportunity for newly arrived people to Australia and established Australians to meet, understand and know each other. Liens coordination role invokes liaising with networks, and organising events within the community, with new migrant groups, city councils, community centres and the local media. In some small way Hawthorn Rotary's annual Christmas Dinner for the socially isolated touches on this.