About Us
The VIVA Trust was established on March 12, 2003, by Stephan Schmidheiny with his donation of a significant portion of his assets to the trust. He set up the trust to create an organization enabling him to contribute in a sustainable fashion to the economic, environmental, and social development of Latin America.
The VIVA Trust consists of a group of productive investments, chief among them the companies of GrupoNueva, a consortium operating in the forestry and construction materials industries. These investments generate profits and dividends that are then used by VIVA for philanthropic purposes or for other productive investments.
The philanthropic investments support initiatives that help promote leadership for sustainable development in the region and its nations. Among the most significant of these investments is the support given to the Fundación AVINA, a philanthropic organization created by Stephan Schmidheiny in 1994. AVINA promotes the creation and strengthening of networks among leaders of social and environmental organizations in Latin America.
The VIVA Trust itself seeks to forge a sustainable alliance between businesses that have been financially, socially, and environmentally successful (triple bottom line) and philanthropic organizations promoting leadership and innovation in order to energize sustainable development. As an organizational innovation, the VIVA Trust is a socioeconomic experiment whose progress and achievements will be made public, as they happen, on this website and through other communications channels.
