Just a couple of weeks ago, we (the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF)) were very happy and honored to announce that after a long and complicated process, the contract was signed for the construction of the three new hospitals in Greece (designed by Renzo Piano) as part of our ongoing Global Health Initiative (GHI) project valued at $1 billion. We believe wholeheartedly that access to quality health services is a right for all human beings around the world. As such, and given that we have to focus both our financial and human capital on the GHI project, we have had to readjust our priorities accordingly for our organization. We have thus, and with heavy hearts indeed, decided to postpone our 2024 SNF Nostos Conference, which was tentatively scheduled to take place the week of June 23, 2024, at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center (SNFCC). The theme was to be “civic engagement and civil discourse,” a topic that matters to all of us, especially given today’s heavily polarized environment that we all live in. We will of course, and as part of our ongoing operations and initiatives as SNF, continue to collaborate with our grantees overall, and especially in this field, in order to promote civic engagement and civil discourse all around.

After 12 years of organizing the SNF Nostos Conferences and touching on very important issues, and after an all-around successful SNF Nostos 2023 focusing on mental health, we see this postponement as a much-needed break.

With warmest wishes for a productive and healthy upcoming fall,

Andreas C. Dracopoulos, on behalf of all of us at SNF