Archon Andreas Dracopoulos, the Co-President of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF), has spearheaded a major donation of $15 million by SNF to St. Michael’s Retirement Home, one of the preeminent facilities which cares for the Greek Orthodox elderly in America.
The funds are intended for the completion of a new building complex for St. Michael’s in Uniondale, New York.
Archon Dracopoulos stated that “in a world we live in where the essence of our own humanity is being tested every day, we are honored to be able to offer our support to projects like this one where as we grow older those who have nowhere else to go will be able to find a home of compassion, dignity, quality…humanity!”
“Our love for Hellenism and the Greek community in all parts of the world is great,” Archon Dracopoulos continued. “Therefore, the opportunity arose for the Retirement Home of St. Michael, which we knew about because it was among our first donations more than 20 years ago. I have to praise the work of Bishop Andonios of Phasiane, because it is due to his own passion and effort, and we have to acknowledge him that thanks to him St. Michael is always doing very well. We will all grow old, so those who have nowhere else to go will be able to go to a home of quality, dignity, and humanity.”
“It’s a very important donation of $15 million,” Stelios Vassilakis observed. “This nursing home has a long and very important presence in the Greek-American community, plays a very serious role, and offers very important services and, the time had come after an exemplary operation of many years to upgrade.”
St. Michael’s Home is an institution of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America and is the only elder care facility in the United States directly under the aegis of the Church of America, with Archbishop Elpidophoros of America serving as Chairman of the Board of Trustees.
The Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) is a private, international philanthropic organization that funds organizations and projects worldwide aiming to achieve a broad, lasting, and positive impact for society at large. The Foundation has made more than 5,100 grants to nonprofit organizations around the world that exhibit strong leadership and sound management since its establishment in 1996 at the passing of Archon Andreas’s great uncle, Stavros Niarchos. In 2012, the Niarchos Foundation received the Athenagoras Human Rights Award for its unparalleled commitment “to guarantee the most basic of all human rights, the right to human dignity, and the right to exist without suffering and without hunger,” in light of its extraordinary beneficence throughout the world.
Dedicated to the work of philanthropy in both his public and private life, Archon Andreas Dracopoulos is a Trustee of The Rockefeller University in New York, Johns Hopkins University (JHU) in Baltimore, and the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, D.C. In addition, he serves on the Advisory Board of the Berman Institute of Bioethics at JHU and is an Honorary Trustee of the New York Public Library (NYPL. In 2018, the President of the Hellenic Republic awarded him the rank of the Grand Cross of the Order of Honor. In 2016, the Republic of France awarded him the rank of the Officer of the Legion of Honor. In 2012, the Hellenic Republic awarded him the rank of the Grand Commander of the Order of the Phoenix.
On October 31, 2021, His All-Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew invested Andreas Dracopoulos as an Archon and conferred upon him the offikion Megas Rhetor.
