Avina is a foundation created in 1994 by Swiss entrepreneur Stephan Schmidheiny to contribute to sustainable development. Fundación Avina, the organization based in Latin America, emerged in 2001 with the mission to produce the large-scale changes necessary for sustainable development in the region.

In its beginnings, Avina focused on identifying, supporting, and developing leadership, building relationships with social activists and entrepreneurs in order to strengthen their initiatives in favor of sustainable development.

During its second phase, Avina began to bring together a critical mass of partners, over time helping them to form national and regional networks. This is how Fundación Avina has been able to strengthen and scale up the initiatives led by the stakeholders we support, while at the same time expanding their capacity to create impact.

Today Fundación Avina fulfills its mission by building and strengthening collaborative processes of change among stakeholders from different sectors, in order to positively impact progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals. Fundación Avina identifies the best opportunities to create systemic change among different institutions, leaders, and agendas. With a team working in 20 countries and across several program areas, Fundación Avina’s approach is based on a framework we call “CollaborAction.” This framework is a type of social innovation that – along with “innovation with purpose” involving cutting-edge technology and new business models – has contributed to accelerating and scaling the processes of change led by the thousands of on-the-ground allies that we support.