Happy New Year! Each year, we at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) take this opportunity to share with you our reflections back on the road we’ve traveled while looking forward to what’s coming in the year ahead.
This year, the past feels less predictive of the future than at any point in memory. New AI technologies have made the shift from novelty to something we already are starting to take for granted, turning age-old foundations of how we learn, how we communicate, and how we formulate ideas into shifting sand. We’re only beginning to grapple with what this means for human consciousness and relations. At the same time, changing civic and international dynamics are upending the narrative arc of the story we’ve been telling ourselves about the world.
At the ancient oracle of Dodona in Epirus, messages were interpreted from the rustling of tree leaves and the chiming of dangling bronze. When the winds of change are blowing at gale force, even the most attentive listening to the clamor reveals little.
The work of grantmaking, though, with its emphasis on the ongoing process of “making,” has at its core yearslong preparation and execution. In spite of the “noise,” we know a good deal about what the coming year will look like for SNF because it will see us following through on plans years in the making and long-term goals to help address fundamental human needs that will be as essential next year as they were last.
2025 finds SNF already preparing for the 2026 delivery of three-state-of-the-art public hospitals to Greece, return of our signature summer gathering, and celebration of our 30th anniversary. This will be a celebration of 30 years of partnerships spanning more than 130 countries around the globe, collaborations large and small whose value is measured in tangible improvement to lives rather than in dollars. Our grantee-partners vary remarkably in scale and purview, but all are united behind a common mission of helping empower humanity.
In 2025 we will continue to foster open public dialogue and civic engagement at large and open access to the cultural and communal resources that help us affirm, reflect on, and grow in our own humanity. With and beyond the new SNF hospitals, strengthening both physical and mental health for people at all stages of life through our Global Health Initiative (GHI) will continue to be a key priority.
Facing up to the challenges and the opportunities that the new year inevitably brings will require fighting for democratic values in every sector of society, of which the most fundamental—and the most overlooked—is preserving our own humanity. I say “democratic values” rather than “democracy” because the overall label is meaningless if we, at the individual level, allow our humanity to be commoditized and thereby diminished. Safeguarding our own humanity means being able to trust in one another, to afford others the dignity we know in ourselves, and to hope for the future.
We wish you and yours good health—physically and mentally, individually and as a community—in the coming year. As a grantmaking foundation, we have a responsibility to do more than wish, and we’ll be working hard this year to see our commitments through. We hope you will accompany us on our journey.
Stay human!
Andreas Dracopoulos
Co-President of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF)