AVSI Foundation (Fondazione AVSI)

AVSI Foundation, an NGO created in 1972, carries out cooperation projects for development, with particular emphasis on education. In its work, its attention is focused on the defense and promotion of the dignity of the person, the cornerstone of every project. We work all around the world thanks to a network of 35 founding members and more than 700 partners. AVSI Foundation works towards development that is sustainable and capable of responding to the real needs of people, inspired by the Social Teaching of the Catholic Church. To this end, it works hard on projects focused on the challenge of education, in which the individual is accompanied and becomes the central character of their own development, and invests a lot of energy in promoting organizations within civil society. AVSI Foundation operates in different environments: education and social development, urban development, health, employment and training, agriculture, food security, water, energy, protection of the environment, humanitarian emergencies, migration, human rights. Their experience, cultivated in different sectors over more than forty years of history, feed into the AVSI Foundation’s Knowledge Center, the center that oversees the documentation collected and produced by various projects, safeguards the knowledge base and promotes its continuing expansion via publications, research, and seminars. AVSI Foundation reaches more than 2.6 million direct beneficiaries per year. Method AVSI Foundation works towards development that is sustainable and capable of responding to the real needs of people. To this end, it works hard on projects focused on the challenge of education, in which the individual is accompanied and becomes the central character of their own development, and invests a lot of energy in promoting organizations within civil society. The method has five fundamental points: 1. The person at the center 2. Start from the positive 3. Working together 4. Development of intermediary and subsidiary bodies 5. Partnership Network The emergencies and the reasons for development assistance are innumerable, the projects underway are many and varied, but in the challenges they face every day on all levels, one of the undeniable strengths of AVSI is its network in Italy and overseas, composed of their founders and their partners in various countries. The experience of shared work in the field and the possibility of working alongside embedded organizations in even the hardest contexts are of concrete help and a constant provocation to broaden their view to recognize the more authentic need of the people they wish to meet and support. AVSI has offices in Italy, USA but also in Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Kenya, Ivory Coast, Sierra Leone, Congo Brazzaville, RDC, South Sudan, Mozambique, Ecuador, Peru, Haiti, Mexico, Brazil, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Syria, Jerusalem, Myanmar.