Our 2018
It’s true: fewer people live in extreme poverty around the world.
Jim Yong Kim, World Bank President, stated that “Over the last 25 years, more than one billion people have lifted themselves out of extreme poverty and the global poverty rate is now lower than it has ever been in recorded history.”
These figures only measure the International Poverty Line in income, which suggest that a person who earns USD 1.90 per day no longer lives in extreme poverty. However, there are many aspects of poverty that remain unseen with this metric. As we get closer to our Goals for 2030, it is important to remember that our mission is not only to alleviate this social and economic problem, but also to eliminate it completely and help people achieve their well-being and full potential.
It is easy to forget that those who have managed to stay above the International Poverty Line may suffer from other social or financial problems. Our experience in helping families to lift themselves out of poverty has taught us two things: (1) poverty can take many shapes and affect families differently; which does not necessarily translate into insufficient income or lack of income, and (2) families do not benefit from standardized solutions for their specific problems; instead they must be aware of their situation in order to aspire to a better future and work to overcome their challenges on their own.
This is what the Poverty Stoplight seeks: to activate the potential of families and individuals to eliminate multidimensional poverty. Our vision is to change the narrative surrounding poverty from one that is often limited to income deprivation and replace it with a multidimensional approach that focuses on empowering families to become protagonists in improving their quality of life. This is an ambitious challenge, but we believe that we have taken important steps to achieve it.
We invite you to learn more about our 2018!
Meet the Global Community
The Poverty Stoplight has been growing exponentially in recent years. From being a tool used exclusively in Paraguay, it has now reached almost 80,000 families in 23 different countries through more than 200 organizations. We are proud of this achievement which brings us closer to our goal of reaching at least 1 million families in the next few years.
The Poverty Stoplight works with organizations around the world that aim to eliminate poverty. We help to expand the concept of multidimensional poverty and provide the necessary tools so that each partner can apply the Poverty Stoplight with their collaborators, clients, communities, or beneficiaries. By the end of 2018, the Global Community consisted of 10 Special Projects and 14 Hubs, which in turn agglomerate 223 local partners.
Due to the tool’s versatility, it can be used by a wide variety of organizations and institutions. The following graph demonstrates the use of the Poverty Stoplight in different sectors:
Each partner is at a different stage: some have completed trainings on the methodology, technology, and strategies of the Poverty Stoplight to eliminate poverty; others are testing technology and training mentors; others are communicating with stakeholders to generate momentum in their community; while many are engaging in fieldwork with families every month. While each partner has its unique history and approach, the Global Community offers a common ground for learning and development.
United we change the world
In May, the Poverty Stoplight Global Community held its first gathering in Paraguay and brought together twelve partners from around the world. It was a day full of bilingual stories and an opportunity to share different applications of the Poverty Stoplight to help families and communities overcome poverty. Despite different cultures and geographical locations, it is clear that many of the strategies used by partners can be extended across cultures. This demonstrates that at the end of the day, families share more similarities than differences. This gathering, which preceded the event Cerrito 2018: Innovation for Poverty Elimination, was designed to take advantage of everyone’s unique knowledge in order to create a space for cooperation and learning.
Cerrito 2018 was an event where innovation was brought at the center of poverty elimination. Organized by Fundación Paraguaya and supported by the Development Bank of Latin America within the framework of the Social Innovation Initiative from the Development Bank of Latin America (CAF) and the International Development Research Center (IDRC), Cerrito 2018 brought together 165 leaders from 13 different countries to share strategies and innovative solutions for poverty elimination.
As the results of these gathering, the Poverty Stoplight Global Community was strengthened, not only to reaffirm its vision and goals, but also to establish new connections between the different actors that compose it.
Beyond Corporate Social Responsibility
Throughout this year, we paid great attention to the development of the Poverty Stoplight as a tool that allows companies to eliminate poverty among employees and their families. We are expanding this initiative to other countries, such as Mexico and Colombia, and we had an important growth in our program here in Paraguay.
In 2018, 32 new companies joined the Poverty Stoplight Business Network in Paraguay and 6 trainings were held on the use of the tool within the business scope.
Since its inception in 2013, 126 companies have worked with the Poverty Stoplight, bringing this poverty elimination tool to 23,167 Paraguayan families. Currently, there are 72 companies actively engaged in the program.
This year, 9 companies measured the results of the Poverty Stoplight implementation, which means they conducted a second round of surveys after the first baseline survey. A total of 1,748 collaborators have managed to overcome different poverty indicators, increasing the total number of green indicators and reducing the number of indicators in red and yellow.
In 2018, the Poverty Stoplight Business Network carried out two editions of the “ANIVE: Stop violence against women” campaign, one in February for the Paraguayan Women’s Day and another in November for the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. Twenty companies were involved in this campaign to raise awareness on this social issue.
The scope of the Poverty Stoplight Business Network within Paraguayan territory has increased considerably. The tool arrived to Eastern and Southern regions of Paraguay through bi-annual, inter-business meetings during the year. We also worked for the first time in the Alto Chaco (Northwest of Paraguay), expanding the tool to almost 100 families thanks to the implementation of the Poverty Stoplight in the Forestal, Campobello and Santa Catalina stock-breeders of the Favero Group.
The Business Network also stood out for empowering families, communities and companies to find innovative solutions to their needs. As a result, more and more Paraguayan families have the opportunity to use the Poverty Stoplight to design their own poverty elimination plans.
Reaching the heart of SMEs
We work with many large companies, however, SMEs are the engine of the local economy. The Poverty Stoplight was born from Fundación Paraguaya’s Microfinance program, whose clients have been using this poverty elimination tool since 2012. This year we expanded the scope and decided to work not only with Women’s Committees from our Village Banking prgram, but also with small businesses owners in order to reach their employees. This allowed us to work with 3800 families and conduct training workshops in the tool for 85 field workers and 27 managers. This year, through the Microfinance program, 1985 families have improve their indicators.
OUR PROJECTS
Cerrito Initiative
In 2017, the Cerrito Initiative was launched, a program that seeks to activate the community of Cerrito in Benjamín Aceval, Paraguay, in order to eliminate multidimensional poverty in three years. Fundación Paraguaya, which is part of the Global Community, identified the level of poverty of the population by administering the Poverty Stoplight to each family that lives in the community.
Families in Cerrito tend to experience stagnation in overcoming extreme poverty. This is mainly observed in 72% of the indigenous families that make up the community. In 2017, the first data collection was made, reaching 891 families. In 2018, the follow-up survey reached 808 families.
Through a network of trained field agents, Fundación Paraguaya implemented personalized mentoring for families in Cerrito that use the Poverty Stoplight, enabling them to find solutions to their specific needs. In many cases, it was possible to activate the entire community through activities that addressed several indicators simultaneously.
This year, multiple trainings were held on entrepreneurship, access to credit, business management, savings and finance. In consequence, the artisans of the community improved the quality of their products and learned about fair trade, as well as finding business opportunities. Field workers also supported and offered information to young people in the community who showed interest in accessing scholarships.
In order to protect the community and its heritage, different organizations worked together to achieve the reforestation of 50 hectares of indigenous lands. We developed digital courses on family gardens and lectures on nutrition, health and care for the environment. On the other hand, field workers managed to standardize the native language of the QOM community, creating the first QOM dictionary with more than 3000 words.
In terms of initiatives to solve health indicators, more than 100 families have actively participated in the Humanitarian Mission of the Asociación Proyecto Paraguay, which brings together Spanish doctors willing to help. This year, seven specialty doctors from the fields of Cardiology, Pediatrics, Endocrinology, Traumatology and Gynecology participated to provide medical care. The XV Región Sanitaria also joined this initiative with its health and oral care mobile, as well as the PANI program (Comprehensive Nutritional Food Program) for early childhood care and the young volunteers of the San Francisco Javier Educational Center.
The families in the community, especially girls, have received training in hygiene and sexual health. They learned about the basic hygiene kit for women thanks to a team of nurses from the University of Utah, and we carried out a sexual hygiene and education project called “Days for Girls”, which consisted of a series of talks aimed especially at 8-year-old girls and older.
These activities, among others, are only a fraction of the actions carried out within the Cerrito Initiative to activate the community. In 2018, the first follow-up survey of the Poverty Stoplight was conducted, yielding the following results:
The Cerrito Initiative is the first project in its kind to use the Poverty Stoplight to lift an entire community out of poverty within three years. At the end of 2018, the initiative was replicated in another community within Paraguayan territory, the Remansito project.
Community Projects
In addition to the Cerrito Initiative, the Poverty Stoplight implements other projects that seek to generate a positive change in different populations. For example, the Manduvirá Cooperative joined the Global Community in Paraguay, launching the Poverty Stoplight for its 700 members. As a result, 12 field workers were trained for the Cooperative and the first data collection was initiated.
Additionally, in Laguna Yovai, 8 families were enabled to build their own farms, thus improving their quality of life for indicators such as Income, Entrepreneurship, Budgeting and Nutritious Diet.
Inclusion in Entrepreneurship
Through this project, carried out in alliance with Lemonaid Charitea, 81 people with visual disabilities who needed capital to invest in their ventures gained access to credit. 31 young people were trained in entrepreneurship and business models. 68 families received a diagnosis of their quality of life. Additionally, we held an event at the Expo International Fair of Livestock, Industry, Agriculture, Trade and Services to speak and increase awareness of the inclusion of people with visual disabilities.
Go Green!
The Go Green! contest aims to encourage families to improve their quality of life, taking action on 11 Poverty Stoplight indicators: Insurance, Family savings, Domestic Violence, Documentation: Identity document, Garbage disposal, Influence in the public sector, Ability to budget, Eye health, Unpolluted environment, Access to entertainment, and Sexual Health. This year, 38 Women’s Committees, representing 1,377 families, participated in the Verdeate contest. The winning committee, from the city of Mariano Roque Alonso, presented the results of the actions they carried out to improve the above-mentioned indicators.
Contests
The contests are healthy competitions implemented among the Women’s Committees of the Microfinance program to improve their quality of life. “My bathroom, my kitchen, my pride” and “My happy smile” are the competitions with the greatest positive impact and are carried out to solve Poverty Stoplight Indicators: Bathroom, Well-conditioned kitchen, and Dental health. Both are promoted by Fundación Paraguaya with the support of the Social Innovation Initiative of the Development Bank of Latin America (CAF). This year we reached 720 families with the contest “My bathroom, my kitchen, my pride” and 427 families with the “My happy smile” contest.
OUR ADVANCES
Tech at the heart of the Poverty Stoplight
The Poverty Stoplight is a powerful tool used worldwide. To scale its use, we developed our own technology: the Poverty Stoplight Platform (PSP). This platform is a set of web and mobile applications designed exclusively to manage Poverty Stoplight surveys, generate reports in real time, and produce interactive life maps.
By allowing the visualization of georeferenced data, the PSP can reveal areas with high frequencies of poverty or extreme poverty, allowing organizations to easily analyze and use this information to make better use of resources and make decisions based on concrete data.
Our technology team is made up of software developers located in Paraguay, Spain, Switzerland, Bulgaria and Germany.
TveT Academy
This year, we used the TveT Academy platform to develop and share courses on the implementation of the Poverty Stoplight and the search for solutions. This platform enabled us to support Fundación Paraguaya’s field workers during the process of developing innovative solutions with affected families. This platform also has Poverty Stoplight classes designed for Fundación Paraguaya’s self-sustainable schools.
In order to have audiovisual content, 13 success stories were collected from different cities in Paraguay. Additionally, 13 videos were created on different success stories. In total, 10 videos, 31 solution cards and 7 manuals were added to the platform to help design solutions for the Poverty Stoplight indicators.
Strengthening the Indicators
The philosophy of the Poverty Stoplight is to activate the potential of families in order to develop plans that allow them to escape from their own poverty. The dimensions and indicators are at the center of the Poverty Stoplight methodology. These allow to assess multidimensional poverty in a way that is appropriate according to the local context, ensuring that families can feel identified with the different levels described.
This year, the Poverty Stoplight indicators were successfully aligned with the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) developed by the Poverty and Human Development Initiative of Oxford (OPHI). The MPI is an index that calculates the “percentage of the population that is multidimensionally poor adjusted for the intensity of their needs” through a standard metric. Based on the similarities of the surveys and knowing that the MPI has been used by 102 countries around the world, the Poverty Stoplight began to work with OPHI in 2017 to align the Stoplight indicators. As a result, starting this year, the Stoplight surveys also serve as data to measure the MPI.
Analyzing the Poverty Stoplight in the field
The Poverty Stoplight has been officially implemented since 2010. While the program began with Fundación Paraguaya’s clients, it soon expanded to reach companies and their collaborators, as well as families that receive interventions from different organizations.
Each implementation is different and brings new knowledge and inspiring stories. However, there is a common ground shared by each application of the Poverty Stoplight: the transformation of families to achieve their goals.
The question is: what motivates these people to face and eliminate their own poverty? Our hypothesis is that the Poverty Stoplight, through its self-diagnosis exercise, begins a process of awareness and appropriation of the situation that drives families to take action.
This year, seeking to answer this question, we supported 10 investigations that aimed to study different aspects of the Poverty Stoplight in the field. Led by qualified professionals from different parts of the world, these investigations will make the most of the information collected in each implementation of the Poverty Stoplight, understanding that it is an indispensable process to achieve greater knowledge about the tool and to innovate towards a methodology that promotes the elimination of poverty.
Poverty Stoplight Around the World
This year has been significant for the Poverty Stoplight and its presence worldwide. In addition to expanding the Global Community to new countries, we had the opportunity to participate in important events related to social entrepreneurship and poverty elimination.
In August, we traveled to Silicon Valley to participate in the Global Social Benefit Incubator at the Miller Center of the University of Santa Clara, California. In addition to acquiring essential knowledge in order to develop a scalable social strategy, we have been able to present the Poverty Stoplight to other organizations and social entrepreneurs, thus allowing the concept of multidimensional poverty to reach a new audience.
In October we traveled to Washington D.C. to participate in the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty organized by the World Bank. During the event New Ways to Analyze Poverty, we were able to share our experience measuring and analyzing multidimensional poverty in different contexts, as well as activating families to turn them into protagonists of their plan to exit poverty.
OUR ALLIES
Development Bank of Latin America (CAF)
The Development Bank of Latin America’s Social Innovation Initiative is a laboratory that identifies, tests and funds projects, on a small scale, that address human development and that have the potential to become helpful solutions to social challenges in the region, particularly to vulnerable populations, while promoting change in trends and contributing to the construction of social innovation ecosystems.
The Development Bank of Latin America’s mission is to promote sustainable development and regional integration, through funding projects from public and private sectors, with a particular focus on infrastructure projects, the support of technical cooperation and other specialized services.
International Development Research Centre (IDRC)
The International Development Research Centre supports research in developing countries to create real and lasting change. This knowledge can be used as a tool for addressing pressing global challenges. They provide developing-country researchers with financial resources, advice, and training to find solutions to local problems; share their knowledge with policymakers, researchers, and communities around the world; foster new talent by offering fellowships and awards; and put new knowledge into the hands of those who can use it best to address global challenges.
Peery Foundation
Peery Foundation’s mission is to strengthen youth and families to build lives of dignity and self-reliance. They serve and invest in social entrepreneurs and leading organizations along the San Francisco Peninsula and around the world. They believe in dignity and self-reliance for the beneficiaries of the organizations they support, and also for their grantees. They’re experimenting with, practicing, and encouraging others to adopt a grantee-centric approach to grant making.
IMAGO Global Grassroots
IMAGO Global Grassroots is committed to working with grassroots organizations and their members to transform poverty into dignity and material well-being. They work around the world with existing organizations to enhance their strengths, build their capacity, and scale up their impact in a way that respects their unique context, attributes and evolution.
Miller Center for Social Entrepreneurship
Miller Center is the largest and most successful university-based social enterprise accelerator in the world. The Global Social Benefit Institute (GSBI®) deliver world-class accelerator programs that connect global social enterprise leaders with Silicon Valley business executives to develop more sustainable, scalable market-based solutions to the problems of those living in poverty around the world. They leverage entrepreneurial spirit with the University’s Jesuit heritage of service to the poor and protection of the planet.
OUR TEAM
The Poverty Stoplight team is a dynamic group of young people from all over the world, passionate about human and social development. We are divided into three areas: Operations, Methodology and Community. We speak different languages and we have different capacities, but we work together for a better world.
Our warmest gratitude to those who helped building a world where we all want to live!
Join us this 2019 by following the Poverty Stoplight in our social networks or visiting our website.
