Berkley Center

Background: This discussion took place on January 1, 2009 between Emily Fintel, Katherine Marshall, and Thomas Bohnett as part of the Berkley Center's series of explorations on Practitioners, Faith-Based Organizations, and Global Development Work. In the interview, Fintel recalls her time in the Dominican Republic as a teenager and how it inspired her passion for social justice and economic development. She discusses her work at the AVINA foundation and its distinct model for social change in Latin America---using private-sector best practices and collaborating with both business and civil society to create social transformation. Fintel highlights the role of religious infrastructure in promoting social equity and building sustainable development; though a secular foundation, AVINA has a strong partnership with Jesuit organizations throughout the region.

Let's start with your own path. How did you come to work with AVINA and where does your love of Latin America come from?

My interest in Latin America goes back to when I was a teenager and had the opportunity to live in the Dominican Republic. Through that experience, I became passionate about the region and the tremendous need and possibilities for achieving social justice and economic development. That first experience in Latin America was in 1993, and I have spent almost 10 years living in the region since then.

My academic background was originally in business, but professionally I moved into the field of sustainable development while working for INCAE Business School in Costa Rica in the late 1990s. At that time, AVINA and its founder Stephan Schmidheiny were partnering with INCAE to create the Latin American Center for Competitiveness and Sustainable Development, an applied research center seeking to demonstrate that these two concepts could be strongly mutually reinforcing.

Following my time at INCAE, I returned to the U.S. to work in the development community in Washington and then to complete the master's program at SAIS. I maintained the connection with AVINA during this period, and returned to Costa Rica immediately after the master's to support the foundation's growth and consolidation. I've been with AVINA for seven years since then.

AVINA is a rather unique institution. Can you tell us something about it?

Founded by Swiss entrepreneur Stephan Schmidheiny in 1994, AVINA's primary aim is to contribute to sustainable development in Latin America by encouraging productive alliances based on trust among social and business leaders and by brokering consensus around agendas for action.

In support of this aim, AVINA seeks a prosperous, integrated, and democratic Latin America, inspired in its diversity, built in solidarity by its citizens, and known globally for its own model of sustainable and inclusive development. We want to be recognized as an effective and innovative organization that contributes to the sustainable development of Latin America.

Created to contribute to sustainable development in Latin America and organized to promote continual learning, AVINA has understood since its founding in 1994 that the best way to invest its human, financial, and technical resources for the transformation of society is to identify and strengthen agents of change: leaders with a vision for the future, democratic ethics, and the potential to generate large-scale impact.

We view social transformation as our core business and are convinced that Latin America has a significant role to play in the global challenges facing the developing world. AVINA works with a partnership network of nearly 1,000 civil society and business leaders, their organizations, and their networks throughout Latin America. Our partners inspire us with their visions for social transformation; they teach us with their innovative approaches, and they help us identify strategic opportunities with their profound knowledge of the local context in which they operate. For its part, AVINA seeks to strengthen them with support services, connect them through exchange networks, and help them to build joint agendas for large-scale action---among themselves and with others---that have a high potential to produce real change. Our activities lead us to collaborate also with thousands of other committed allies, joining their institutions and networks in a variety of important activities, initiatives and alliances.

What is AVINA's structure? Does it have a specific headquarters?

AVINA is one of the largest foundations in Latin America, with 22 offices throughout 11 countries. Being “local” is a core component of our change model. Our local offices are all linked to a common institutional strategy, and the vision is that local leadership and identification of opportunities for social change can contribute to the building of collective action agendas of regional scale and relevance. In a practical sense, AVINA is a "virtual" organization, with no official headquarters. Our executive team works from six different locations.

What are some of the connections to private-sector methodology?

AVINA's origin is linked to the private sector through the background of our founder, Stephan Schmidheiny. From the very beginning AVINA referred to its “grants” as social investments and utilized an analytical process which sought to incorporate private sector best practice. We have also consistently sought to build bridges between leaders of business and civil society.

An additional connection occurs with GrupoNueva, the conglomerate of Stephan Schmidheiny's companies in Latin America, all of the shares of which were donated to the VIVA Trust. VIVA responds to the core belief that philanthropy and business together possess an enormous potential, to develop synergies in the creation of a better society for future generations.

Where has religion come into the picture for AVINA?

AVINA is a secular organization. Over time, however, we have in fact developed a strong and enduring partnership with the Jesuits and their strong education and social distribution networks throughout Latin America.

Can you tell us a little about that partnership?

Our relationship with the Jesuits in Latin America began in the late 1990s. During initial conversations, there was a shared recognition that on the one hand, the Jesuits were managing what de facto is the largest private educational network in the world, yet that many of its parts were not able to take advantage of what the system as a whole could provide. There was also a shared conviction that Jesuit education was uniquely positioned to provide solutions to the seemingly intractable challenges of education among the poor in Latin America, and that AVINA could contribute to those efforts.

In 2000, we formally established a partnership between AVINA and Jesuits which crystallized in the creation of a new organization, Centro Magis, which has been funded entirely by AVINA. Centro Magis' goal is to strengthen the educational and social works of the Society in Latin America and by extension their contribution to the causes of social equity and justice.

Over the last eight years, Centro Magis has supported three main partners: AUSJAL, the network of more than 30 Jesuit universities in Latin America, which educates at any given time about 250,000 students; Fe y Alegria, a 50-year strong organization that educates over 1.5 million children throughout 17 countries, with over 35,000 staff; and perhaps close to 100 other social initiatives related to a variety of topics such as rural technical training, youth leadership development, among others.

Pentecostalism has experienced dramatic growth in Latin America in recent years, seemingly at the expense of membership in the Roman Catholic Church. How do you see, if at all, that this will affect service delivery across the region?

I think that there's a false dichotomy, with one displacing the other. With such great and persistent need, I certainly would hope that the two come to be complementary.

Haven't we seen some changes, though, perhaps in reaction to the rise of Pentecostalism, in how the Catholic Church has been operating in Latin America?

This isn't something that at AVINA we have studied in any depth. I would say that we have seen a shift, especially in how the Jesuits involve lay people and are engaging a wider and more diverse range of partners, which could be a reaction in part to what you're describing. The Jesuits are certainly adapting and adjusting to new realities and also their recent change in leadership. In the current global context, I believe we are all asking how we can be more relevant in facing the challenges of the region. I think one response from the Society has been a concerted effort to work more at the boundaries of society, at the fringes, where there is often tremendous need but little attention.

What kind of cooperation is there between AVINA and governments in the region?

During much of AVINA's institutional evolution, we did not have direct relationships with governments in the region. Our change theory was based on the notion that civil society and business working in collaboration could together be powerful agents for change---which would often by extension involve some level of cooperation or interaction with governments. More recently, we have begun engaging more directly with public sector actors as part of our work to build regional collective action agendas where all three sectors of society can engage in effective partnerships for change.

What challenges are there for AVINA and others promoting sustainable development in light of the global economic crisis?

I don't think that what Latin America faces is so different from the challenges the rest of the world faces. One real danger that we have to be aware of is trading long term sustainability for short term crisis management. How do you reconcile what we need to do about climate change, the need to create better livelihoods, with the urgent need to mitigate the crisis? AVINA believes that innovation and partnerships are more critical than ever in this environment. We see the crisis as an opportunity for social entrepreneurs to bring solutions to bear on these very serious challenges.

What do you see as major challenges for civil society in Latin America today (civil society defined as including faith institutions broadly)?

The first three that come to mind would be: 1) Finding and developing avenues of meaningful collaboration across institutions and sectors; 2) Identifying and incorporating models and strategies which provide for long-term sustainability of efforts and impact; 3) Developing innovative solutions which can be scaled to meet the dimensions of the region's needs and opportunities.