Who Owns Poverty?: Revised Edition

What if nearly everything we thought we knew about poverty was wrong? Who Owns Poverty? answers this question by recounting the extraordinary story of the Poverty Stoplight, one of the most effective anti-poverty programs in the world.

The Poverty Stoplight was developed in 2010 by Dr. Martín Burt, founder and CEO of the nonprofit Fundación Paraguaya. In Who Owns Poverty? Burt explains how the Poverty Stoplight works—by putting poor people in charge of defining and diagnosing their own multidimensional poverty. The Spotlight platform offers a self-assessment survey and intervention model that enables families and communities to identify their unique challenges and develop practical solutions to overcome them. In short, they become the owners of both the problem and the solution.

First published in 2019, Who Owns Poverty? has been updated for this revised edition. As Burt writes in the new preface, “It truly is incredible the way the Stoplight Network has grown in the past five years.” Today the program has been implemented in more than 60 countries, in partnership with over 850 organizations and 200 private sector companies. Additionally, Who Owns Poverty? has been published in Spanish and Portuguese editions, and the Stoplight Network is working with communities in more than 24 unique languages.

This book is for all the governments, development NGOs, charities, dreamers, thinkers, doers, and leaders who are frustrated with limiting their aspirations to reducing poverty, or alleviating its effects—and the lack of progress we face in doing either. This is a book about unleashing trapped energy within poor families to do the unthinkable: eliminate global poverty once and for all.

Dr. Martín Burt is a social entrepreneur who has developed social innovations in microfinance, education, poverty, environment, and public policy. He has worked in business, civil society, and government, in both elected and appointed positions. In addition to his ongoing work with Fundación Paraguaya. Burt is a Distinguished Visiting Professor of Entrepreneurship and Social Innovation at Worcester Polytechnic Institute and Research Associate at University of California, Irvine. He was born in Asunción, Paraguay where he resides with his family.