President Bush invites SAE president to White House reception honoring U.S. humanitarian leaders, groups

CHICAGO, October 9 -- President Bush has invited World Council of Hellenes (SAE) President Andrew A. Athens to an October 11 White House reception honoring individuals and institutions for outstanding contributions to humanitarian and reconstruction causes around the world.

The President of SAE and National Chairman of the United Hellenic American Congress (UHAC), Mr. Athens has been invited to attend the reception in the famous Rose Garden, hosted by president Bush and sponsored by the umbrella agency American Humanitarian & Reconstruction Effort. He is among about100 selected prominent Americans who have been invited to this special gathering in which Mr. Bush will express his gratitude to individuals and institutions for their outstanding contributions to humanitarian and reconstruction causes worldwide. Mr. Bush also will express his appreciation to the American school children who raised $10 million in support of the Afghan Relief Fund.

Mr. Athens has been extended this honor because of decades of humanitarian and philanthropic contributions in the U.S., Greece and other parts of the world, both in secular and church projects. As SAE's founding president he created the Medical Care Initiative and established six free care medical centers in Hellenic communities in the Newly Independent States of the Former Soviet Union. Three centers are in the Republic of Georgia, one in Armenia, one in the Ukraine, and one in Albania. Two others are being planned for Albania and Southern Russia in areas of high concentration of Hellenes. Other philanthropic aid has been distributed also to communities in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.

Mr. Athens, a retired industrialist, has been praised widely for envisioning and initiating the medical initiative and for devoting, as a volunteer, an extraordinary amount of resources, time and energy to sustain it. The administrator of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has also invited Mr. Athens to a lunch meeting on the occasion of the White House reception.