POVERTY STOPLIGHT OLYMPIC GAMES: ENGAGING YOUTH IN OVERCOMING POVERTY

The "Poverty Stoplight Olympics," is a competition between groups of high schools students, with the end goal of bringing awareness to students about poverty and their own personal abilities to overcome it. In 2014, the contest was implemented for the first time in Paraguay, reaching over 400 students. The students first self-diagnosed their family's level of poverty using Fundacion Paraguaya's Poverty Stoplight methodology, and throughout challenges learned how to support their families in overcoming certain poverty indicators. Thanks to the competition young people managed to strengthen their abilities to become change agents in their communities and support their families in overcoming multidimensional poverty. After conducting a survey with students and teachers post-Olympics, our findings were that throughout the interactive and fun competition, students were engaged in the process of thinking of innovative ways to support their family in overcoming poverty and were motivated to continuing to support their community as a whole.