21 wins from 2021

2021 was a challenging but fulfilling year for the Poverty Stoplight. After the first decade of life, we immerse ourselves in a process of expansion and consolidation, both in Paraguay and in the world.

Talking about everything we did will take a long time, so we decided to close 2021 with 21 milestones or “wins” for the team.

Thanks for sharing this path with us!

Worldwide, we applied about 216,337 Stoplights, in different languages ​​and adaptations and we continue to add more. For this achievement, we thank the organizations and people who joined us during all these years since the creation of the tool.

The Global team exceeded its goal of countries where the Poverty Stoplight is applied.The Stoplight reaches all these points either through organizations, special projects, companies, and others. This is how we reached the ambitious number of 44!

The ones that joined this year are: Canada, Portugal, Georgia and Cambodia.

These countries join the global network that it’s already integrated by: Argentina, Armenia, Bolivia, Brazil, Cambodia, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Estonia, Philippines, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Mali, Mexico, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Peru, Portugal, United States, United Kingdom, Dominican Republic, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Taiwan, Tanzania, Ukraine, Uganda, Uruguay, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam.

The Stoplight Technology team continues to grow. We managed to incorporate new features such as the Survey Builder and an intervention module to the platform.

On the one hand, the Survey Builder, as its name says, is a tool that allows you to enable surveys more quickly. This is important for the Stoplight because one of the strengths is the adaptability of the methodology to any context (for example, other countries). On the other hand, the intervention module will help the facilitators to register on the same platform the different actions they carry out with the families after having taken their Stoplight.

This year, all the needed processes to launch a high-impact multinational project with the Unbound organization we carried out. This initiative is called “Unbound Orientation Goal”.

This project will allow adding more offices in the countries where the organization works and applies the Stoplight, as well as opening new ones. The countries included in this project are 16: Honduras, Guatemala, Colombia, Kenya, Philippines, Mexico, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Peru, El Salvador, Dominican Republic, Bolivia, Rwanda, Uganda, Tanzania, and Madagascar.

The Stoplight Research team carried out several relevant works related to the topic of poverty. One of the largest was for USAID, called "Priorities and Challenges in 8 departments of Paraguay." This work used the Poverty Stoplight as part of its methodology. The report was published so that other organizations can use the data in projects in Paraguay.

The study: https://www.usaid.gov/sites/default/files/documents/ListeningTourReporteFinalEspanolFundPara.pdf

In addition: we carried out two field investigations within the Atlas Network Project “Poverty and Freedom”, we prepared a research report on “Poverty, Social Protection and Empowerment in Paraguay” and finally, we developed a research report on the formalization of micro-enterprises in Paraguay.

Several of these investigations were published in scientific journals! The last one was “Poverty, social protection and empowerment: Analysis of the Paraguayan social protection system”, published in Ciencia Latina.

The publication: https://ciencialatina.org/index.php/cienciala/article/view/1276/1740

The Stoplight program for companies took a turn this year and that is how the network of “Companies without Poverty” emerged. 24 new Paraguayan companies joined the network, which allowed more than 5,300 workers to do the Stoplight this year and thus develop a plan to improve their quality of life, with support from their employers.

The network itself was strengthened thanks to numerous activities organized throughout the year, in which companies were able to share their experiences, generating a community of collaboration and learning.

A video about the network, here (in Spanish): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blf06jx3KLE&t=22s

In November, the network of “Companies without Poverty”, together with the Pacto Global Paraguay, and the companies Cervepar and Banco Itaú, carried out the international seminar “Somos Par”. The objective of this event was to discuss how to enhance the generation of value in companies from gender equality. On the occasion, international and local companies shared their experiences about inclusion and equality policies.

Link of an article about the event: https://www.lanacion.com.py/negociosedicionimpresa/2021/11/11/somos-par-busca-potenciar-y-equilibrar-oportunidades-laborales-para-mujeres/

Semaforismo is a movement that brings together the so-called “Stoplight Ambassadors”, who are social actors from all over the country who, from their work and volunteering, are committed to the elimination of poverty through the tools of social innovation provided by the Poverty Stoplight. Through them, 500 organizations signed up to implement the tool.

Also, through the Semaforismo team, the tool was presented to almost 1,500 social leaders, including: representatives of civil organizations, entrepreneurs, candidates, mayors and governors.

From 2018, the Fundacion Paraguaya and the Poverty Stoplight have organized the Cerrito Forum event, which today has become a space to exchange strategies to eliminate poverty. But this year, the situation of the pandemic forced us to innovate in every way, especially in the format of the forum.

For this reason, Cerrito Forum evolved into the Cerrito Forum Week and opened its doors to various actors in society, such as: youth, women politicians, government authorities, analysts, journalists, entrepreneurs, businessmen, etc., with the slogan: Rethinking a society without poverty post COVID-19, from Paraguay to the world.

Regarding the format, we resorted to a hybrid format: the public and some speakers connected from their homes, while others attended in person from the Cerrito Forum studio that we designed for the occasion. Thanks to this change, individual connected participants exceeded 1,000 users in 17 countries, throughout the week.

More info, here: https://fundacionparaguaya.medium.com/?p=241b0a55f587

Given the need to condense all the topics that arose in the Semaforismo meetings, the Poverty Stoplight team organized the Municipal Development Forum at the beginning of December. At the event, local authorities met, such as mayors and municipal councilors, and topics on governance, public management, citizen participation, open government, and fundraising were discussed.

Sediwilka Morilla Valiente, who belongs to the Paĩ Tavyterã indigenous community and works as an extensionist of the Poverty Stoplight in Cerrito, met with Queen Letizia of Spain at the beginning of November. They discussed Sediwilka’s work and other initiatives in favor of indigenous communities and the elimination of poverty.

The queen asked her what activities they are currently developing. “I told her that now we are working with young people, women and families in Paraguay to help them thrive, leading initiatives related to entrepreneurship," said the young woman after the meeting.

An article about the meeting, here (in Spanish): https://www.povertystoplight.org/es/blog/extensionista-del-semaforo-se-reunio-con-la-reina-letizia

The Cerrito Initiative is a project of the Poverty Stoplight and the Fundación Paraguaya through which the results of the Stoplight in the community are constantly monitored .

Only this year, this initiative allowed the access to medical care for one hundred families, ten entrepreneurial fairs in the area, and the installment of 137 orchards for self-consumption and sale. In total, some 950 families from Cerrito applied the Stoplight.

Based on the logic of the Poverty Stoplight (red - yellow - green), this year the team created the “Green Stoplight”. It is a self-diagnosis tool that allows to determine the individual impact on the environment and generate -from these results- an applicable action plan.

The first version of the "Green Stoplight" is available to the public. The tool can be accessed through the link http://bit.ly/SemaforoAmbiental, using “ambiental" (environmental, in Spanish) as user and “123456” as password.

More info about the Green Stoplight, here: http://www.fundacionparaguaya.org.py/v2/?noticias=novedosa-herramienta-permite-conocer-nuestra-huella-ambiental

We launched the Leaders V Network, which is a platform that brings together young university students who seek to contribute to the environment and have a leadership profile.

This network was inspired by the Green Stoplight, since the tool generates individual and collective lines of action in favor of the environment. We didn’t want this to stop there, so the Leaders V Network emerged and today reunites almost 200 volunteers.

This year, we carried out the first challenge of the network and reached 2,800 Green Stoplight evaluations! This way, we generated a database on environmental habits that will guide the actions aimed to respond to the problems identified.

More info about the network, here (in Spanish): https://www.instagram.com/p/CXJx_EeDjo4/

Almost 1,700 applicants for the Itaipú Scholarships -a government scholarship that allows outstanding young Paraguayans to study at university- were evaluated on the socioeconomic aspect through the Fundación Paraguaya.

The young people who were finally awarded the scholarships continue with a process of improving their quality of life according to the results of the Stoplight. With the support of the mentors, the scholarship recipients generate their own solutions to gain integral improvements in their quality of life, beyond the academic aspect.

In June, representatives of the Poverty Stoplight partner organizations gathered at an event called “Stoplight Week”. On the occasion, they shared the experiences of implementation and progress of the tool in their respective countries and their approach strategies, taking into account the situation of the pandemic. This event was not only open to members but was broadcasted via streaming on different platforms such as Zoom, Facebook and YouTube.

We are happy to announce that we established the Stoplight throughout North America, the most recent addition being Canada, with the Food Bank in December of this year. Canada joins Mexico and the United States, countries in which the Stoplight has been present for several years now.

In the case of Mexico, the Unión de Empresarios de México (USEM) is part of our network, while in the United States, we find the Thrive Lights office, which connects with governments and other organizations.

Thrive Lights also works with the following organizations throughout the United States: Dallas Lights, Roots of Renewal, The Salvation Army, University of North Carolina / Community Aspirations Hub, Orange County United Way, and First Step Staffing.

Through Fundación Paraguaya, in October we donated USD 10,060 to Fonkozé, which is our partner organization in Haiti. This contribution joined the efforts of the organization in its work to support the families affected by the earthquake that occurred in August of this year. Among those affected are former students of the Cerrito Agricultural School.

The event, here: https://www.facebook.com/povertystoplight/videos/1575737539429827

The Poverty Stoplight was present in the plenary session of the High Authorities on Human Rights of Mercosur Reunion (RAADH), held in October of this year. In the segment corresponding to Civil Society Organizations, we talked about the importance of implementing human rights standards in actions to eliminate poverty.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CVOTWPQrP_Z/

The Poverty Stoplight was awarded several recognitions throughout 2021. Among them, the ODS Recognition (Sustainable Development Goals) in the Organizations - People category, for its work dedicated to objective 1 "End of Poverty" and other objectives.

But we were not only awarded by the ODS Commission but also by the public! People voted for the Stoplight as the outstanding initiative for its work in favor of the Sustainable Development Goals.

Likewise, the Education Stoplight was awarded as one of the ten most innovative social initiatives in Ibero-America developed in 2020. This award was given by the Development Bank of Latin America (CAF) and the magazine Compromiso Empresarial.

More info, here (in Spanish): https://www.caf.com/es/actualidad/noticias/2021/05/caf-y-compromiso-empresarial-premian-las-10-mejores-iniciativas-de-innovacion-social-de-2020/

Throughout 2021, we were invited to numerous events where the Poverty Stoplight was presented and discussed as an innovative tool for the elimination of multidimensional poverty. Some of the places we visited were Stanford University and George Washington University in the United States, the Unión de Empresarios de México (USEM), La Salle University in Colombia, among other relevant places.

And much more!

Behind these achievements is a multidisciplinary team that every day puts their best to obtain these results. Our wish for 2022 is to duplicate our efforts to continue working for a world without poverty where we all want to live.