Abstract:

​​​​Fundación Paraguaya is a non-governmental organization founded in 1985, based in Asunción, Paraguay. With more than 400 staff in 25 offices across the country, Fundación Paraguaya works to achieve its mission to “develop and implement practical, innovative, and sustainable solutions that allow activating the entrepreneurial potential of families to eliminate their multidimensional poverty and live with dignity” through a strategy composed of four interrelated programs: Microfinance, Entrepreneurial Education, Self-Sustaining Agricultural Schools, and the Poverty Stoplight. With over 35 years of experience developing initiatives and national and international outreach programs, Fundación Paraguaya is internationally recognized and has been awarded several prizes for its social innovation and contribution to achieving poverty elimination.

Our Poverty Stoplight is a bottom-up solution for the eradication of multidimensional poverty. It is both a metric and methodology that promotes critical and collective action. As a metric, it allows families to self-assess their level of poverty through 50 multidimensional indicators. As a methodology, it helps families set their priorities and goals based on the results of their indicators and develop strategies to meet these goals, with the assistance of a mentor. This process allows individuals to first develop critical awareness (i.e., perform a critical analysis of their situation) and then build critical and collective agency to understand the opportunities they have to improve their situation. Thus, the Poverty Stoplight makes the overwhelming reality of poverty understandable and actionable.

Under the same concept, we developed the Education Stoplight: a self-assessment that allows the main agents of education (Students, Teachers, Parents, and Principals) (STTPs) to reflect on what their current situation is and how they can reach the situation they aspire to, as well as to activate their potential to achieve educational success. Through a self-diagnosis of their academic conditions, students, teachers, and principals will develop personalized plans to take advantage of their strengths and overcome their deficiencies. At the same time, the parents will self-evaluate to improve the support they provide to their children during the learning stage.

The self-evaluation is conducted using a mobile or web platform, in which STTPs complete a survey that is divided into dimensions and indicators. All indicators have the same features as the Poverty Stoplight tool, enabling participants to identify their strengths and areas for improvement, as well as select their own priorities. The Education Stoplight considers education as a multidimensional concept, meaning that its success does not rely on school resources or factors alone. One of the methodology’s greatest strengths lies in motivating positive results from what is measured through aspirational, actionable, and achievable indicators. By seeking solutions to each indicator, it helps to generate actions and priorities to better channel existing resources and to promote collaboration among all stakeholders.

Our theory of change underlies that if STPPs are enabled to self-assess the learning, pedagogical, and engagement conditions and plan their own solutions, and they have access to mentorship, best practices, and activities to promote participation, then the school community will be engaged, and student academic performance will be improved.

Keywords:

Education, students, teachers, parents, principals, self-assessment.