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The Vietnam News

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French ski instructor helps raise funds to support Central Highland ethnic minorities

PARIS - A Snowboard competition has been held recently in the French ski station of Val Thorens by a French humanitarian organisation to raise funds in support for Viet Nam's Central Highland ethnic minorities.Nhan Dan newspaper quoted François Xavier Hélas, chairman of the AAMEV (Assistance to Ethnic Minorities of Viet Nam Association) as saying that the annual competition, launched seven years ago draws more than one hundred skiers and has succeeded in collecting about 15,000 euros each year.

Born into a Ba Na ethnic family in the Central Highland Kon Tum province, François-Xavier Hélas migrated to France at the age of 12 and became a ski instructor. On a visit to his homeland in 1989, he saw the difficult conditions in Kon Tum and decided to set up a association to support its ethnic minorities people .The association has helped establish small-sized projects in farming and husbandry, building communal houses, collecting folk songs, legends, promoting handicraft and providing scholarships to poor students.

The AAMEV has funded the building of ten communal houses and will together with ETHNICA association build ten others this year.Since 2001, it has provided monthly scholarships to 20 students.

At a dinner held at the close of the competition with the screening of a movie about the battle of Vietnamese and French employees at the Ha Noi-based French hospital against SARS, Béatrice Hélas, François-Xavier Hélas's wife, who runs a shop selling Central Highland's handicrafts said they have two children, a girl and a boy. "We gave them Ba Na names which together will bear the meaning of solidarity".-

Vietnam News Agency - July 1st, 2003