Dina Hashish

Dina is pioneering a healthy aging movement in Egypt, enabling older adults to live with independence and dignity. By mobilizing older adults and their families, she is building a supportive ecosystem that secures their social, health, and well-being needs and puts them on the national agenda.

In Egypt, aging has traditionally been perceived as a quiet descent, characterized by isolation, invisibility, and systemic neglect. Dina Hashish saw a different reality. While caring for her father through cancer and dementia, she recognized that older adults were not only underserved but also excluded from meaningful participation in society. This personal journey led her to experiment with structured routines, cognitive stimulation, and intergenerational engagement within her own home, yielding transformative results. 

What began as a personal caregiving experience for Dina soon blossomed into a powerful public mission. Motivated by her encounters with aging across family, community, and professional settings, Dina launched a movement that brought together older adults seeking connection, families navigating care, doctors offering insight, and volunteers driven by compassion. In 2019 and using Facebook groups as primary medium to bring those actors together, Dina grew this group into a trusted online community of over 90,000 members, where stories, questions, and reflections on aging were shared openly. These digital conversations quickly expanded into real-world gatherings, creating safe spaces for intergenerational exchange and mutual learning. Her vision was simple yet radical: aging should be celebrated, supported, and shared. This is the first structured movement in Egypt that allows for older adults to actively engage with their surroundings.

Building on this momentum, Dina established a national movement that integrates physical health, mental wellness, lifelong learning, and intergenerational solidarity. Her model is peer-led and community-driven. Dina trains older adults to lead workshops, organize events, and mentor others. She fosters intergenerational collaboration by engaging youth and caregivers in activities that promote mutual respect and understanding. Her programs, ranging from choir groups and art classes to walking rallies and digital literacy courses, are designed to combat isolation and promote active aging. 

Starting in Greater Cairo, Dina expanded her reach to Giza, Alexandria, and Mansoura, establishing local chapters that offer tailored programs and support. Her work has gained official recognition: the Golden Years Foundation (GYF) is registered with the Ministry of Social Solidarity, and its events—like Egypt’s first Senior Citizen Rally—are held under the auspices of national ministries. Dina is actively engaging ministries, media, and local authorities to shift public discourse around aging—from a reactive, care-based model to one rooted in empowerment, visibility, and inclusion. Her vision is to transform aging in Egypt into a stage of growth, dignity, and contribution—where older adults are seen, heard, and valued.

In Egypt, the process of aging has usually been associated with illness, inability, and helplessness. While the number of older adults is rising rapidly, there is no cohesive infrastructure to support them socially, emotionally, or digitally. This problem is not affecting a small segment of the population; on the contrary, Egypt’s population aged 60 and above is expected to reach 22 million by end of 2025. Older adults in Egypt are widely misunderstood, stigmatized, and excluded from national priorities.

This misunderstanding and stigmatization, evident in the absence of structured opportunities for engagement, have led older adults to become isolated. Isolation often leads to depression, anxiety, and cognitive decline, and increases the intergenerational gap. Many seniors spend their days in silence, disconnected from their communities and from themselves. This isolation is manifested in not being able to communicate with other older adults, not being able to communicate with their younger family members, not being able to access a network of trusted doctors and not being able to engage in the wider community or to feel worthy of themselves.

In the digital era, isolation has not remained simply physical. The digital divide has become a barrier to survival. Technology is essential for accessing services, maintaining relationships, and participating in society, yet older adults in Egypt lack the essential digital skills to get connected. This exclusion prevents access to vital resources and reinforces the perception that aging equals irrelevance. In a world moving online, older adults are being left behind.

To break this isolation, older adults usually depend on family members as primary caregivers, which puts more pressure on those family members, reinforcing the notion that aging is a burden rather than something to celebrate or share. These family caregivers also lack access to a community that understands what taking care of an older adult in Egypt looks like. They also lack meaningful engagement with older adults, as their interactions are often limited to care rather than connection. Furthermore, they lack access to a trusted network of doctors. Most of them operate without formal training, emotional support, or peer networks. Family caregivers are also an essential part of Dina’s national movement because they need structured engagement and support as well.

In such communities that neither celebrate nor share aging, there is widespread misinformation and a lack of public awareness about aging. Geriatrics is still a poorly understood field, and aging is often viewed solely through a medical lens—ignoring the social, emotional, and cognitive dimensions. Many believe that aging inevitably leads to decline and dependency, rather than recognizing it as a stage of continued growth and contribution. This problem requires healthy aging and older adults to be placed on the national agenda. It requires coordinated, community-driven, and scalable solutions to show governments the missed opportunity in engaging with and supporting older adults—and to make this a widespread culture.

Recognizing that independence is central to aging with dignity, Dina’s strategy centers on co-creating solutions with older adults and caregivers, using a design-thinking approach to ensure relevance and dignity. She first built a digital ecosystem—including Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, and YouTube—that engages over 15,000 members daily through resource sharing, emotional support, and expert-led content. Digital literacy sessions and tutorials empower older adults to access services and participate in virtual communities. Building on this digital inclusion, and to promote wellness, Dina launched a series of online fitness classes to promote physical health and routine, including yoga sessions, breathing exercises, meditation sessions, and dance classes. These sessions improved well-being and fostered joy and motivation among older adults. To address broader wellness needs, she organizes expert-led workshops on health, legal, and financial topics, reaching over 10,000 participants in 2025 alone. These sessions, begun virtually before the formation of her organization, Golden Years Foundation, continue and are now shared across the foundation’s media channels to ensure wide accessibility. Recognizing the importance of social connection, Dina also hosts virtual meetups, creating safe spaces for older adults to build relationships and reduce isolation. 

As COVID-19 restrictions eased, Dina created the Golden Years Foundation (GYF) and expanded into in-person programming, delivering a diverse portfolio of activities. She led nursing home visits, which mobilized over 600 volunteers for intergenerational engagement. In 2023, she launched 28 book club workshops across Greater Cairo, and in 2024, organized over 90 choir events that gained national media attention. Her recreational programming, such as Nile cruises and birthday celebrations, reached more than 4,000 participants. She also introduced creative workshops in crochet, sewing, and macramé, alongside nine handcrafted bazaars showcasing participants’ work. These initiatives reflect her holistic approach to aging, centered on connection, creativity, and community.
 
As part of her commitment to promoting healthy aging through social inclusion, Dina pioneered the first senior walking rallies in the Middle East. Held annually from 2022 to 2024, the “Walk the Walk” rallies brought together over 5,000 older adults and their families, transforming public spaces into vibrant arenas of intergenerational solidarity. These high-visibility events, consistently held under the auspices of the Ministry of Social Solidarity and the Ministry of Youth and Sports, challenged stereotypes, reshaped public perception, and elevated GYF’s credibility as a civil society actor. Beyond advocacy, the rallies foster meaningful community engagement, offering fitness activities, entertainment, resource booths, and volunteer support that encourage seniors to participate confidently in public life.

To scale her approach, Dina established four active chapters across Egypt, each reflecting the growing reach of their mission. Cairo and Giza, launched in September 2020, form the heart of Greater Cairo and have engaged over 60,000 participants, with more than 10,000 actively involved in offline activities. These chapters are supported by 15 WhatsApp sub-groups with thousands of members, fostering micro-communities for deeper engagement. Alexandria’s chapter, launched in November 2023, has reached over 6,000 participants. Mansoura, the newest chapter launched in November 2024, has welcomed over 1,000 participants. Each chapter reflects its city’s character while upholding GYF’s core values of dignity, empathy, and community. Cairo and Giza host high-visibility programs like the “Walk the Walk” rally, wellness series, book clubs, choirs, nursing home visits, and craft bazaars. Alexandria focuses on cultural enrichment through seminars, museum visits, and educational outings, while Mansoura emphasizes emotional connection through eldercare visits, Nile excursions, and birthday gatherings. Member engagement is guided by strict privacy practices and shared principles of respect, compassion, and integrity. Dina now scales her activities through the Chapters, with each leading and organizing events as needed by the community, with GYF serving as a centralized resource hub, offering accessible information on senior services and caregiver referrals, particularly in Cairo and Mansoura—ensuring every chapter reflects a culture of care and meaningful connection.

Ultimately, these events serve not only as celebrations but as strategic tools for inclusion, policy influence, and social transformation.   In addition to the flagship rallies, GYF organized seven mini rallies across various governorates, engaging nearly 2,000 older adults in inclusive, community-based wellness events. Strategic partnerships with government entities ensure transportation and accessibility, even for those with mobility challenges. These rallies offered fitness activities, entertainment, and emotional connection—restoring dignity and visibility to older adults who had long felt excluded from public life. The emotional impact was profound—one participant shared that it was his first time leaving the house for a non-medical reason in four years, attending with a catheter attached to his wheelchair. His joy and pride in being part of a public event reflected the deeper purpose of these rallies: to restore dignity, visibility, and connection for older adults who have long felt excluded from public life. 

Dina recognizes that family caregivers often face a silent struggle, juggling emotional, financial, and logistical challenges with little structured support. While GYF’s primary focus is on older adults, its model is designed to indirectly alleviate caregiver stress by ensuring that seniors are socially engaged, emotionally supported, and physically active. This, in turn, frees caregivers to reclaim time for themselves and reduces burnout. Through the Golden Years Community Facebook group, GYF has cultivated a peer-driven digital ecosystem where caregivers exchange practical advice, share emotional experiences, and access expert-led wellness content. The platform offers crowdsourced solutions to daily caregiving challenges, trusted referrals for medical and home care services, and emotional reinforcement through shared stories and peer encouragement. It also provides structured knowledge on dementia care, nutrition, mental health, and legal navigation, delivered through live sessions, recorded videos, and curated posts across Facebook and YouTube. Plans are underway to expand this digital support into real-world engagement through caregiver meet-ups and mental health workshops. Testimonials and case studies from the community bring this impact to life. For example, Kareem, a long-distance caregiver living abroad, found reassurance and practical tools through GYF’s online platforms, enabling him to care for his father in Egypt with greater confidence and less stress.

Although Dina Hashish began her work only a few years ago, she has quickly become a leading voice for healthy aging in Egypt, actively shaping national policy. As a member of Egypt’s National Committee for the Rights of Older Adults, she collaborates closely with the Ministry of Social Solidarity and co-led the development of a caregiver training curriculum aligned with Law No. 19 of 2024, in partnership with government bodies, NGOs, and healthcare professionals. While implementation is currently paused, GYF is preparing to re-engage new leadership and pilot certification programs. Beyond curriculum development, GYF’s partnerships with ministries and international organizations have elevated aging issues in public discourse. Its annual “Walk the Walk” rally, approved by the Ministry of Social Solidarity and the Ministry of Youth and Sports, has become a flagship public health event. GYF also submitted a healthy aging blueprint outlining key recommendations—from standardized caregiver training to public awareness campaigns—which was positively received and backed by its 96,000-member community. Additional efforts include renovating a nursing home under government auspices and organizing a landmark celebration at the Cairo Opera House on International Seniors Day, where the seniors’ choir will perform on a national stage—symbolizing pride, visibility, and inclusion. This demonstrates a truly historical moment where Dina’s movement and work with older adults, caregivers, and the broader community is needed more than ever.

Dina envisions aging as a phase of continued growth, dignity, and engagement, and is building a scalable model to expand GYF’s reach across Egypt and the MENA region. A key priority is enhancing its digital platforms to engage 200,000 older adults and caregivers by 2028, through an integrated online hub offering health resources, social forums, and caregiver toolkits across Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, YouTube, and short-form video platforms. GYF is also expanding digital literacy through partnerships with universities and schools ensuring older adults can confidently access and benefit from online services. In parallel, GYF is strengthening its local presence by launching two new chapters, supported by structured volunteer systems, senior mentorship programs, and youth engagement initiatives. On the organizational level, financial sustainability will be driven by a multi-stream model—including sponsorships, grants, individual giving, paid training, and an upcoming e-commerce platform for senior-led businesses. Strategic partnerships with ministries, hospitals, insurers, and universities will amplify GYF’s visibility, policy influence, and service delivery—advancing a national movement for healthy aging rooted in inclusion and community.

This vision has attracted national and international interest. On the national level, Dina has been invited to speak at every major aging-related conference in Egypt, where the GYF model consistently draws interest. She has been working also with key local and international organizations in Egypt and with governments to put her strategy on the national agenda. On the international level, Dina receives several invitations to speak at major aging conferences and exploratory discussions with stakeholders from Azerbaijan and Qatar where key organizations and government officials have expressed interest in collaborating with GYF. Although these conversations have not yet led to formal replication abroad, they reflect genuine enthusiasm and have inspired Dina to ensure the GYF model is well-documented, adaptable, and responsive to regional needs. Ultimately, GYF seeks to build a national movement for healthy aging, where older adults are supported holistically, and caregivers are empowered through knowledge, networks, and community.

Dina’s journey toward founding the Golden Years Foundation was a gradual process shaped by early experiences, responsibilities, and challenges that, in retrospect, prepared her for this mission. Dina’s childhood played a key role in developing her entrepreneurial mindset, problem-solving skills, and commitment to social impact, particularly in promoting healthy aging. Growing up as the first grandchild in her maternal family and an only child, Dina naturally became a main source of information within her family, especially concerning caregiving and age-related health issues. Her upbringing in an intergenerational household—including her uncles, aunt, grandparents, and mother—exposed her early to the challenges and gaps in aging care. She also witnessed caregiver burnout, especially within the Egyptian context, where aging is often perceived as a state of dependency rather than continued empowerment.

Born and raised in Egypt, Dina demonstrated entrepreneurial qualities from an early age. At just 11 years old, she organized her school’s first used book sale to raise funds for new library books, convincing skeptical administrators through persistence and resourcefulness. While studying Law at Cairo University, she noticed a disconnect among students in the Arabic, English, and French law sections, leading to disengagement and limited interaction. To address this, she ran for student union office on a platform focused on creating a more inclusive student experience through internship opportunities, legal aid clinics, faculty panels, and extracurricular activities. Her efforts successfully promoted integration and awareness among law students.

Upon graduation, Dina earned a scholarship to pursue a Master of Laws at Stanford University, where she was inspired by the university’s diverse and inclusive community. She was struck by how older adults were active on campus—joining yoga classes, Tai Chi, and acapella groups—and even participating in protests, such as the “Raging Grandmas.” This exposure shifted her perspective and made her realize she wanted to do something beyond corporate law.

After graduation, Dina worked at a law firm in New York, where, as a nursing mother, she faced challenges balancing work and motherhood. Her advocacy for a nursing room and flexible hours led to new workplace policies that supported both female and male employees with caregiving responsibilities. These efforts improved employee retention and inclusivity and strengthened her belief in systemic solutions for caregiving and work-life balance.

Dina’s entrepreneurial mindset was further shaped by her caregiving experiences. As a child, she read newspapers to her grandfather, coordinated care for her grandmother, and witnessed her mother’s burnout—lessons that taught her aging is not a medical condition but a social journey. Caring for her father, who battled cancer, dementia, and Parkinson’s disease, deepened her understanding of the emotional and logistical challenges families face. Despite her successful career in New York, Dina and her family eventually moved back to Egypt to be closer to their extended family, which proved vital for her father’s care.

During the COVID-19 lockdown, Dina’s family, including her father-in-law visiting from abroad, found themselves isolated together. Drawing on her research about protecting elderly family members from depression, she created a structured daily routine that balanced predictability with cognitive and social stimulation. Despite her father’s deteriorating health, the schedule had a remarkable positive impact—he became more engaged, cheerful, and even regained some physical abilities. The experience demonstrated how structure, routine, and intergenerational connection could improve seniors’ well-being.

The pandemic also revealed a broader crisis of isolation among older adults. Many of Dina’s friends struggled to connect with their aging parents during lockdowns, exposing a critical gap in emotional and social support for seniors and caregivers. Inspired by her father’s experience, Dina launched the Golden Years Community on Facebook in 2020. What began as a digital lifeline during lockdown quickly evolved into a national movement—driven by her vision to create a space where older adults could connect, thrive, and age with dignity.