The Elios Charitable Foundation sponsors at least ten Elios Scholars each year—talented Greek American college students from the greater Northern California area—to participate in the Heritage Greece program, in partnership with the National Hellenic Society. This transformative two-week experience offers a deep cultural and educational immersion, helping students strengthen their connection to Greek heritage, language, and traditions. Participants explore their identity through modern language instruction, visits to historic archaeological sites, and meaningful engagement with contemporary Greek life. The program includes one fully transferable academic credit and offers students lasting insight into their cultural roots and a greater appreciation of Greece’s past and present.
The Greek Orthodox Folk Dance and Choral Festival has received more than $200,000 from the Elios Charitable Foundation over the past several years. The organization is dedicated to promoting, encouraging, and perpetuating Greek heritage and culture among individuals, families, and communities by expressing it through folk dance, folk art, music, and language.
The Elios Charitable Foundation supported the Metropolis of San Francisco’s Our Greek Village program. This immersive summer camp offers youth the opportunity to explore their faith, culture, and traditions while taking a virtual journey to a different region of Greece each year.
The Elios Charitable Foundation supported the Belmont Holy Cross Greek School with a grant to procure school books and upgrade their audio-visual system.
With grants totaling more than $167,000, the Elios Charitable Foundation has sponsored two significant works of ancient Greek art—Arabalos in the Shape of a Hippalektryon and a Cycladic Figure, and was also the founding member of the Ancient Art Council. ECF also helped fund a performance of Euripides’ Iphigeneia in Tauris, a collaboration between the Ancient Art Council of the Fine Arts Museums and renowned director Carey Perloff. The Foundation has supported FAMSF’s Museum Ambassadors program and remains a major funder of the Get Smart with Art initiative. The Ancient Art Council is dedicated to perpetuating, safeguarding, and deepening the understanding of ancient art and culture from the Mediterranean basin.
The Elios Charitable Foundation supported HAWC’s Annual Regional Conference, honoring women who have made an extraordinary contribution to the ideals of Hellenism in their professional and personal lives.
The Elios Charitable Foundation supported the Kairos Youth Choir Greek Choral Music Recording Project by underwriting the cost of recording a performance of both existing and newly written Greek music by the choir members. The Foundation also has supported Kairos’ participation in the International Festival of the Aegean in Syros, Greece. Kairos is a community treasure that provides a nurturing environment for musically-interested children.
The Elios Charitable Foundation provided a grant to support Kombos Collective’s Vardari, a performance and album exploring shared Balkan and Ottoman musical traditions through a Hellenic lens, featuring multilingual songs and original arrangements.
The Elios Charitable Foundation proudly supports the annual Los Angeles Greek Film Festival, which highlights the work of filmmakers from Greece, Cyprus, and the global Greek diaspora. The festival brings compelling new films and diverse storytelling to U.S. audiences, fostering cross-cultural dialogue and appreciation for Hellenic cinema.
The Elios Charitable Foundation proudly supports the San Francisco Greek Film Festival, an initiative of the Modern Greek Studies Foundation. Dedicated to promoting modern Greek language and culture, the Modern Greek Studies Foundation sponsors the festival and its programs, which celebrate the richness and relevance of Hellenic culture through film and public events.
Within Sacramento State University’s Donald & Beverly Gerth Special Collections & University Archives, the Tsakopoulos Hellenic Collection anchors the Hellenic Studies Program in the Angelo K. Tsakopoulos Hellenic Studies Center and serves as a globally recognized research resource through the Hellenic Research Fellowship Program (HRFP).
The Elios Charitable Foundation supported the 2019-2020 San Francisco concert series by Cappella Romana, featuring performances of Mary and The Cross, Hymns of Kassiane, and From Constantinople to California. Cappella Romana is a professional vocal ensemble that performs early and contemporary sacred classical music in the Christian traditions of East and West. The ensemble is known especially for its presentations and recordings of medieval Byzantine chant, Greek and Russian Orthodox choral works, and other sacred music that expresses the historic traditions of a unified Christian inheritance.
The Elios Charitable Foundation sponsored the Hellenic Heritage Institute’s annual Greek Music, Food and Wine Festival in San Jose and its school educational programs, which provided hands-on activities focused on social studies curriculum, such as history, language, and the Olympic Games.
Scholarships for students in the Modern Greek Studies program and faculty stipends were supported with funding from the Elios Charitable Foundation.
The Elios Charitable Foundation was a major funder of the documentary, The Greek Americans II: Passing the Torch, as a part of a series on the Greek American experience.
The Elios Charitable Foundation funded the Library Research Fellowship Program to support the use of the Tsakopoulos Hellenic Collection by fellows for scholarly research in Hellenic studies while in residence at California State University, Sacramento.
With a grant, the Elios Charitable Foundation supported the Center for Modern Greek Studies in their mission to promote modern Greek language, literature, history, and culture, and for visiting professors to teach two courses per semester and to lead a lecture series on topics relevant to the Hellenic American community.
As one of the primary sources of Greek community and ethnic news in the western United States, The Hellenic Journal is supported by the Elios Charitable Foundation.
San Francisco’s annual Greek Parade and celebration of Greek Independence Day, presented by United Hellenic American Societies of California, was sponsored by the Elios Charitable Foundation for several years.
The Elios Charitable Foundation partnered with the Center for Tebtunis Papyri (a research project supported by the Bancroft Library) to sponsor a papyrology fellow to preserve, reconstruct, decipher, and translate the Greek language portion of papyri found in Tebtunis, Egypt. The 1899-1900 expedition to Tebtunis was funded for the University of California by Mrs. Phoebe Apperson Hearst. The papyri form the largest collection of papyrus texts in the Americas.
The Elios Charitable Foundation made a significant grant to the Nemea Center to support its mission of teaching, research, and public service centered around the University of California excavations in Nemea, Greece.
Learn more about the organizations supported by the Elios Charitable Foundation. For details on how you can support our mission, please contact us at info@elios.org.
