The TIMA Charitable Foundation’s mission is to support the development of Greek nonprofit organizations and programs dedicated to social improvements in the field of ageing.

TIMA’s philanthropic activity has been wide-ranging across four main sectors including Ageing and Disability, Ageing and Health, Care Home Support and Care-at-Home programs.

These four main pillars of TIMA’s grant making therefore, cover some of the most pressing needs of the elderly in Greece. However, the Foundation reviews every grant request on its individual merits and is also quick to adapt to a changing environment where necessary.

Older people experience disability in different ways; they may have a pre-existing disability or they may have acquired a disability as a result of the ageing process. The elderly that have disabilities are more vulnerable than the general ageing population especially during economic crises and health crises such as the Covid-19 pandemic. Increased vulnerability has led older disabled people to rely heavily on others to provide appropriate support. Moreover, people ageing with disability may also be inadvertently excluded from particular services due to limited funding sources and restrictive program requirements. In the current environment it is increasingly challenging to find either family or professionally trained caregivers to support older adults with disabilities. Through its grants, the TIMA Charitable Foundation has and continues to fund initiatives that fulfill the needs of older disabled people, and that build a culture of inclusion, whereby quality of care and quality of life can ultimately be improved.

As people age, they require more support with respect to their health and become more at risk of developing age-related degenerative and chronic diseases. Presently, most people can expect to live well into their seventies and beyond. Recent data, moreover, indicates that Greece holds one of the highest ageing rates in Europe. The percentage of the elderly population in Greece has increased significantly in the last decade, and is higher than the EU average, with one in four Greeks over 65 years old. The predominance of these issues has fueled the need to reinforce the general health of the ageing population. It is an area that TIMA will continue to contribute to through its annual grant making.

A person’s longer life expectancy, and more specifically that person’s quality of health, has a fundamental effect on his or her contribution to society. According to the World Health Organization, while it is often assumed that increasing longevity is complemented by a prolonged period of good health, this is unfortunately not always the case. Hence, if effort is made to improve the general health of the older population, their quality of life improves, and local community participation rises.

Due to the latest economic crisis and the recent pandemic, vulnerable groups such as the elderly have been amongst those most affected. In the last decade, many care homes in Greece have experienced a fiscal squeeze. As a result, this has forced them to minimize or even cease crucial investments, namely in infrastructure, equipment and expansion of their programs. The majority of care homes are also unable to offer a holistic approach to the care of their elderly residents through the provision of services such as psychological support and recreational activities. This lack of stimuli drives many elderly people towards social isolation, a phenomenon that through its grants, TIMA seeks to alleviate.

The strategy behind the support for care homes is to supply basic needs with grants that include for example, the provision of food, medical supplies, and equipment. In addition to this, TIMA encourages capacity building programs where possible. By rethinking and reinventing the way care homes operate, the ultimate goal is to provide higher quality and more personalized care for the elderly. Capacity building may also include elements of staff training and empowerment, making care homes a place where employees wish to work, thereby reducing staff turnover. In this way, long-term meaningful interaction and engagement with the elderly can be achieved.

In recent years, the demand for care at home programs for persons with dementia has increased, not just because the number of individuals with dementia has risen (a worldwide phenomenon), but because research has shown that a person-centered care approach eases dementia-related mental and behavioral symptoms. At the same time, care at home programs aim to ease the load on the individual’s primary caregiver, while giving them useful knowledge and tools that make caring for the person with dementia more manageable. The Foundation has funded several care at home programs for persons with dementia and other chronic illnesses, as well as their caregivers, throughout Greece. These programs help individuals with dementia live at home as long as possible and avoid institutionalization. Each care at home program is unique, but all are composed of health professionals who visit the care recipients at home on a regular basis, offering nursing services, physical therapy, psychological and psychiatric support, as well as cognitive training through mental strengthening exercises. Additional elements of some programs also include assistance with light housework, cooking and occupational therapy interventions that optimize the home environment for the maximal wellness of the person with dementia. Lastly, while these care at home programs may vary in duration, all have as their goal to train the caregiver as well as possible in order to be able to deal with the various stages of dementia as the disease takes its course. In Greece, about 130,000 individuals are diagnosed with dementia, whilst research points to many thousands more undiagnosed cases.