We take advantage of the knowledge managed by VIVA Trust and its affiliated organizations to design comprehensive strategies that lead to collective impact, institutional strengthening, and social responsibility towards sustainability.
The impact network that we belong to, incorporates knowledge on various important issues for multidimensional sustainability.
We work on three core topics:
Sustainability and social progress
This core topic focuses on the generation of regulatory frameworks and strategies that guide the multidimensional sustainability process of countries and organizations, as well as the appropriate indicators to monitor their social progress.
Formal and informal markets
Markets and value chains can generate a win-win relationship between sectors of society in their business areas. Key aspects can be found by integrating collaboration between formal and informal markets, to generate social inclusion and economic progress.
Impact Investing
We adapt the theory of impact investing in various contexts present in Latin America and the Global South, and we study and redefine it. Effective impact investing is related to understanding the context. Through the return in the form of positive social or environmental impact, impact investing manages to solve problems in the societies where it is installed together with a financial return.
Our approach
We set the long-term goal that the communities themselves, through strategies and concrete actions, achieve inclusion and social progress.
We understand social inclusion as the process of improving the ability, opportunity, and dignity of people, at disadvantage due to their condition, to participate in society. We understand social progress to be the satisfaction of basic human needs and the maintenance of a dignified, and constantly improving, quality of life.
Why do we focus on social inclusion?
We set our long-term sight for the communities themselves, through strategies and concrete actions, to achieve inclusion and social progress.
We understand social inclusion as the process of improving the ability, opportunity, and dignity of people, at disadvantage due to their condition, to participate in society. We understand social progress to be the satisfaction of basic human needs and the maintenance of a dignified, and constantly improving, quality of life.
Social exclusion is a key obstacle for societies in the Global South that, if solved, could be a driver for social progress and economic growth.
Inclusion is a concept that has received significant attention from international organizations and has been predominantly understood as a means of economic equality.
According to the World Bank, social inclusion can be defined as “the process of (…) —improving the ability, opportunity, and dignity of those disadvantaged on the basis of their identity.”
In Latin America, societies suffer from weak or non-functioning democratic institutions and informal markets. Therefore, a large part of the population is excluded from social benefits.
Market and democratic institutions, which allow the materialization of the voice of minorities in public decisions, did not emerge with the strength that allows them to perform the inclusive function.
In Latin America even today, many groups remain excluded from institutional mechanisms. This has led to a society that is, nowadays, one of the most unequal in the world.
Social Progress
We understand social progress as the full satisfaction of the human needs of citizens in a society that coexists harmoniously and that can improve people’s quality of life. Likewise, social progress seeks to generate the conditions for the entire population to reach its full development and potential.
Social progress raises the development of all people and the whole person.
The research work and proposal of solutions that seek to positively impact the social progress of the communities, at the same time that knowledge is obtained, generates tools that guide societies towards a dignified economic, social, and environmentally sustainable life.
We believe that social progress must be measurable in order to transform people’s lives and to recognize the state of each society with respect to attainable and achievable goals of social progress.