Rooted in Community: Avery Dennison Brazil Is Sustaining What Matters Most

Rooted in community: Avery Dennison Brazil is sustaining what matters most

Avery Dennison Foundation

April 23, 2026

Rooted in Community: Avery Dennison Brazil Is Sustaining What Matters Most

Children at ABID praise Avery Dennison employee volunteers.

Last summer, when the Avery Dennison team in Brazil arrived to help at a local foster care organization, they found that the entrance felt heavy and sad to children already arriving in crisis. The garden, rebuilt in one day, is now where children read books, play outside and meet their prospective adoptive parents for the first time. It is also an example of what companies and their employees can do when they show up for the communities around them.

The Brazil team has found that employees take pride in their company when it supports a local organization in their hometown or city. It not only boosts employee engagement in giving back but also supports organizations' sustainability and ability to thrive through grants, donations and employees' hands-on help. Exemplifying what’s possible when teams align their efforts with the company’s values, the Brazil team received the Avery Dennison Foundation Leadership Excellence Award in 2025.

"When I think about the impact a company can have on the world around it, I know it goes far beyond what any individual could do alone,” said Camila Benedetti, R&D, Sustainability and Innovation Senior Director at Avery Dennison LATAM. “That's what inspires me. Avery Dennison’s support for communities is already part of our company’s core values. As an employee, why not leverage that opportunity, especially when your personal values align perfectly with the company's? To me, that's the best scenario."

Avery Dennison team ready to restore the garden at Associação Beneficente ABID.

Benedetti is also a trustee of Avery Dennison Foundation (ADF), and over the past years, she and teammates have helped identify Foundation grantees and contributed employee volunteer hours to key partner organizations across Latin America. Each non-governmental organization (NGO) is carefully selected to align with the Foundation’s focus areas of education access, environmental sustainability, and secure livelihoods.

For example, Associação Beneficente ABID, which provides foster care services to children referred by the government courts and the custody system, is an NGO near Avery Dennison's offices in São Paulo, Brazil. Another example is Instituto Anderson Varejão (IAV), which came to ADF with a proposal to implement projects across the region. Its mission is to impact participants’ education through basketball by developing their physical and psychological capacities, all while guided by the principles of inclusion, social integration and sustainable development.

Specifically with ABID, employees started small by donating clothes and organizing bazaars where they donated items for sale to benefit the organization. As participation grew, the team took on a project to rebuild ABID’s garden in front of the shelter. Prep work for the garden was done in advance so that volunteers could arrive, plant trees, put plants in the ground, arrange benches and tables and have the garden fully completed by the end of the day.

AD Volunteers enjoy connecting with each other, the earth and plants in the ABID garden.

According to Benedetti, there is a real connection between the NGO’s work and its impact on employees and the community. With ABID, the group had a chance to interact with the children. “It was a beautiful moment for everyone who was present. The kids got to see how important the organization’s work is for them. Those experiences create stories. You share them with colleagues. And that creates more engagement the next time. Time is always a constraint for our people, but I feel a genuine desire in them to make time for the community volunteer opportunities we create.”

“During my visit to ABID, I could see that the team members really live out volunteerism as their core value and connect with the company's values in a unique way,” said Isabela Monteiro Galli, VP and General Manager, Latin America. “Not only are they very active in selecting initiatives, but they also ensure that the organizations are maximizing grant dollars as well as local tax benefits to help support their sustainability. Every employee engaged in a grantee is truly making a difference in the overall impact for the people they serve.”

The AD Brazil team shares that same energy with a second partner, this one focused on youth sports. Through a grant to Instituto Anderson Varejão, employees helped develop the Ídolo Social Project — a free weekly basketball program for youth ages 7 to 14 in Vinhedo, Valinhos and Campinas, cities that are home to the largest concentrations of Avery Dennison employees in the region. The program serves children enrolled in local schools and provides psychological support.

Employees' children were also invited to join the basketball classes, giving families a chance to connect with the kids to see, up close, why the work matters.

Participants of Instituto Anderson Varejoão’s Ídolo Social Project are basketball game-ready.

The team’s vision is to find opportunities where everyone can contribute to the community. When employees work together, they can positively impact many people's lives. There’s a real passion for the communities where they live and work, with employees often bringing NGOs that need support to the ADF team's attention.

Benedetti hopes the work inspires other companies. "We cannot change the life of the entire community around us," she said. "But if we work together, we can do much more." This is how AD Brazil is sustaining what matters most: showing up–to plant a garden, participate in a basketball game, or simply make time for the people in our local communities.

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Rooted in community: Avery Dennison Brazil is sustaining what matters most

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