Identity

The Organization for Welfare Benefits and Social Solidarity (OPEKA) is the single public body responsible for implementing the Greek State’s social welfare and solidarity policies.

A welfare state built on meaningful solidarity, with common rules and equal access. This is the vision embodied by OPEKA.

OPEKA’s role

OPEKA aims to establish a unified, modern and coherent administrative system for identifying and addressing the population’s actual needs.

People always come first. Our goals are to reduce poverty and social exclusion, and to support vulnerable groups with the right tools precisely when they need them.

OPEKA is here to support families, persons with disabilities, older people, people in need and children.

The transition from OGA to OPEKA

To carry out its wide-ranging and particularly important work, the Organization drew on the staff, expertise and existing central and regional administrative structures of the Agricultural Insurance Organization (OGA), which was renamed and transformed into the unified Organization for Welfare Benefits and Social Solidarity.

As OGA’s universal successor, OPEKA continues to exercise OGA’s existing non-insurance responsibilities in the areas of family benefits, benefits for uninsured older people and the Agricultural Hearth Account (LAE).

These responsibilities are gradually being expanded to include the award of all welfare benefits, financial assistance and social services to vulnerable groups, individuals and households with insufficient income and assets.

Target population

The groups served by the benefits administered and provided by the Organization are:

• families with children,
• people at risk of poverty or living in conditions of extreme poverty and social exclusion,
• persons with disabilities,
• uninsured older people,
• other vulnerable groups.

Beneficiaries are selected and enrolled in benefit programmes tailored to the needs covered—cash benefits, benefits in kind and services—according to objective terms and conditions established by law. Most administrative procedures are electronic, ensuring transparency and accountability.

Mission

OPEKA’s mission is to deliver welfare benefits effectively and efficiently and provide social services to our most vulnerable fellow citizens, supporting equal and inclusive social development.

Social solidarity and development

Adequate support for vulnerable people through public funding, from national or European Union resources; a steady reduction in the number of people living below or at risk of falling below the poverty line; and the fight against social exclusion are tangible expressions of solidarity in civil society. They make a decisive contribution to fair and socially acceptable development.