The late Tony Lewis and his wife Lisette established The Lewis Foundation in 1994 through a deed of trust. They nominated the Foundation as the ultimate residual heir of their estates.
The purpose of the Foundation is:
The conservation, rehabilitation and protection of the natural environment
and/or
The care of animals, including the rehabilitation and prevention of the
ill-treatment of animals and/or
Awareness, education and training programmes relating to greening, cleaning-up
or sustainable development.
Tony and Lisette passed away within nine months of each other and the Foundation was vested from the 30th of April 1995. Shortly thereafter the trustees commenced setting up operations.
Until 2008 the Foundation channelled sponsorships through recognised conservation organisations such as The Endangered Wildlife Trust and WWF-South Africa. The generous legacy of the Lewis family enabled the Trustees to make substantial contributions to a wide variety of conservation programmes ranging from environmental education and animal welfare through to species and habitat conservation.
The Foundation's Funding Focus
A new era for the Foundation began in March 2008 when the Trustees decided that funding a wide variety of conservation programmes, ranging from environmental education and animal welfare through to species and habitat conservation, would remain a popular source of funding for the conservation fraternity but would probably never lead to the Lewis Foundation making a substantial impact on any particular sphere of conservation.
In light of the considerable growth of the Foundation, which places it in a position to play a proactive and catalytic funding role, the Trustees agreed on a process to identify one priority area in conservation where the Lewis Foundation could have a significant impact and play a catalytic role.
To achieve this the Lewis Foundation drew on the opinions of a group of 40 intellectually athletic and innovative thinkers. 81% of participants raised the issue of the lack of skilled capacity to manage and conserve South Africa's astounding biodiversity.
Thus a new focus for the Foundation was born: Catalysing the biodiversity sector to develop a collective and innovative strategy to attract and retain biodiversity professionals and conservation managers.
The 2005 National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan and 2007 National Biodiversity Framework, prioritised the development of human capital for biodiversity conservation and management and The Department of Environment Affairs subsequently mandated the South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI) to play a lead role in facilitating and catalysing coherent sector-wide initiatives
Consultation with key stakeholders and NGO's indicated support for SANBI to play this lead role with the result that SANBI, in partnership with the Lewis Foundation, took a bold and decisive step to lead the development of a stakeholder-based, Human Capital Development Strategy and Implementation Plan for the biodiversity sector.
The objective of the strategy: To increase the pool of potential biodiversity professionals and conservation managers, particularly from previously disadvantaged groups. This will be achieved through:
Strategic interventions at various points in the human capital development pipeline
Partnering with sector-wide initiatives to attract and retain biodiversity capacity within
organisations whose core function is biodiversity-related.
The Lewis Foundation is committed to supporting the implementation of the strategy. To facilitate this the foundation will take advice from the implementation team and an appropriately skilled advisory panel that will be set up to guide and inform the Foundations' additional disbursements in this priority area. The Lewis Foundation will also look an innovative strategies for leveraging additional funding to increase its spend.
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