Since 1942 the Oinoussai Benevolent Fund has kept a small Aegean island’s schools and clinics going from London, and its annual ball gathers the city’s Greek shipping families in Belgravia.
The Oinoussai Benevolent Fund, the London charity behind a small Aegean island’s schools and clinics, holds its annual ball at The Peninsula London in Belgravia on Saturday 21 November 2026.
Oinousses is a cluster of small islands off Chios with a few hundred permanent residents. Its families have run merchant fleets for generations and remain a presence in world shipping.
Oinoussians living in London founded the Fund in 1942, during the war, to support the poor and the sick on the island. It has kept the island’s schools, clinics, churches and cultural institutions going for more than eight decades. The Fund is administered from London rather than from Greece.
The ball is the Fund’s principal fundraiser and the one night London’s Greek shipping community gathers as a single body. Owners, families and friends of the island share one room, and many of the families present have supported the Fund across several generations.
This year the dinner and dance takes the St George Ballroom, the hotel’s pillarless principal room under a coffered ceiling. Recent editions have drawn some 450 guests, and the proceeds go to the people of Oinousses.