French Community Uses the Arts to Support Humanity

This past weekend members of Los Angeles’s French community held a friendship exhibition to support both the arts and the humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders.
French Community Uses the Arts to Support Humanity
11/3/2011
Updated:
10/1/2015

<a><img src="https://www.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2015/09/Valentine.jpg" alt="Michelle Valentine, a registered nurse and volunteer with Doctors Without Borders. She served in Cote d'Ivoire in April, when the country descended into violence over a contested presidential election.  (Courtesy of NTD Television)" title="Michelle Valentine, a registered nurse and volunteer with Doctors Without Borders. She served in Cote d'Ivoire in April, when the country descended into violence over a contested presidential election.  (Courtesy of NTD Television)" width="320" class="size-medium wp-image-1770479"/></a>
Michelle Valentine, a registered nurse and volunteer with Doctors Without Borders. She served in Cote d'Ivoire in April, when the country descended into violence over a contested presidential election.  (Courtesy of NTD Television)

LOS ANGELES—This past weekend members of Los Angeles’s French community held a friendship exhibition to support both the arts and the humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders.

The organization Accueil has hosted the art exhibit for the last 18 years, always with proceeds going toward Doctors Without Borders. The last four years the event has been held at the French consul general’s residence in Beverly Hills.

“You’ve probably heard about those great doctors who go any place in the world, where there is civil war, or an earthquake, a mudslide, a tsunami,” said event organizer Michelle Cassidy about Doctors Without Borders. “You can name anything—they are always there with their dogs and their surgeons, saving lives, all around the world.”

Accueil, an organization for French expatriates, hit upon the idea of doing an art exhibit from the very beginning. “It was a success,” said Cassidy, of the first event, nearly two decades ago.

“People are happy because they buy art, or they enjoy it, they buy lottery drawing tickets, food, they hear French-speaking people, and they are happy about it—a little bit of being in France for an afternoon,” she explained.

“Through all of that, they know that they are helping the world too, because buying a pastry or buying a piece of art gives money to those doctors.”

Art was for sale at the event, but performances were also scheduled throughout the day, including musicians and dancers.

“As a consulate it’s always great to support any initiative that people have, and as you know it’s for a great cause today,” said Etienne Farreyre, the French consulate’s deputy cultural attaché.

A representative from Doctors Without Borders described some of the work the organization has been able to do around the world, particularly because of the group’s independent nature.

The group was founded in France, and sometimes is known by its original name, Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF). There are three foundational principles that have given it an important place in the world: impartiality, neutrality, and independence.

Melissa Valentine, a registered nurse and field volunteer for Doctors Without Borders, explained the value of independence for the organization.

“Independence is vital for the organization because it allows us to work in areas like Libya and Somalia, and for example, this year when I was in the Cote d’Ivoire,” she said.

Valentine was in the African nation during the disputed presidential election between Laurent Gbagbo and Alassane Ouattara, when violence was rife. She had arrived in April after Gbagbo had just been captured, and it wasn’t known who or what group was responsible.

“It was only because MSF works as an independent organization and doesn’t receive any large funds from any outside government or institution that we were able to pass through armed militia checkpoints in the city during that time,” she said.

She explained that MSF set up two hospitals, where they dealt with hundreds of trauma patients daily, ranging from gunshots and burns to orthopedic fractures. The secondary of the two hospitals also saw about 150 outpatient cases a day, because the health care system in the country had broken down at the time. Many of those daily cases were children diagnosed with malaria.

Donations to Doctors Without Borders can be made directly at their website,
www.doctorswithoutborders.org.