Fundación Paraguaya (FP) is a non-governmental organization which was founded in 1985 and is based in Asunción, Paraguay. With more than 400 staff in 25 offices across the country, FP 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 programs of national and international outreach, Fundación Paraguaya is internationally recognized and has been awarded several prizes for its social innovation and for its contribution to achieving poverty elimination.
Young people from poor farm families cannot benefit from education removed from their daily lives, without opportunities to apply their learning productively.
FP piloted “education that pays for itself” in residential facilities offering first-class education and farm enterprise experience .
Martin Burt applies learning from microfinance to other areas of development, such as education, health, and housing.
The school model is being replicated by more than 50 organizations in 27 countries.
Fundación Paraguaya believes in “Capitalism without Poverty,” and that poverty can be abolished like slavery or eradicated like smallpox. Technology must serve to empower family households and individuals to define, measure, and act upon the deprivations that affect them, on their own terms.
Fundación Paraguaya believes in scaling programs and ideas through country partnerships with governments, NGOs, and the private sector. The organization has developed software that will permit hundreds of millions of family households to embrace do-it-yourself approaches to overcoming poverty with new coaching and mentoring.
Founder & Executive Director, Fundación Paraguaya
Dr. Martin Burt is founder (1985) and CEO of Fundación Paraguaya, an organization dedicated to the elimination of poverty.
Dr. Burt is a pioneer in applying microfinance, microfranchise, youth entrepreneurship, financial literacy and technical vocational methodologies. As part of that work, he has developed the Poverty Stoplight, a digital platform that allows families to self-diagnose their levels of poverty and design customized strategies to improve their livelihood. The tool is being implemented in over 20 countries, including the US and the UK.
Dr. Burt holds a PhD from Tulane University, and is a visiting professor at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) and distinguished visiting professor at University of California-Irvine (UCI).
He is currently a member of the Board of Directors of the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship at the World Economic Forum and of the Global Foodbanking Network. In public service, he has served as Chief of Staff to the President of Paraguay, was Mayor of Asunción, and Vice Minister of Commerce.
An author of several publications, Dr. Burt has written on economics, development and education and has received numerous awards including Outstanding Social Entrepreneur - Schwab Foundation (2005), Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship - Skoll Foundation (2005) and The Wise Prize for Education - Qatar Foundation (2009), Nestle Prize in Creating Shared Value (2012). In 2018, Fundación Paraguaya was awarded the First Place Prize for the Inter-American Development Bank's Juscelino Kubitcheck Visionarios Award for extraordinary organizations working to improve lives in Latin America.
Poverty Stoplight currently reaches over 200,000 families in more than 48 countries. Together with its sister organization, Teach A Man To Fish, Poverty Stoplight’s School Enterprise Challenge reaches youth in more than 100 countries. More than a dozen microfinance organizations in Latin America are using the Poverty Stoplight methodology to move beyond financial inclusion and embrace poverty elimination. The government of Ecuador is embracing Fundación Paraguaya’s self-sufficient school and Poverty Stoplight methodologies.
