October 31 marks the International Savings Day and Fundación Paraguaya, committed to financial education for the most vulnerable families in the country, has recorded that more than 100 families, a total of 5.7% of households, have generated their first savings thanks to the Poverty Stoplight tool.

A total of 1,785 families from rural (13.2%) and urban (53.9%) areas were surveyed with the Poverty Stoplight, in two stages. In the first survey, only 25.39% marked the “We have savings” indicator in green, which means that they are doing well in that area, compared to 48.7% who marked in red (we are bad) and 25.86% in yellow (we are not that well).

Once the first self-diagnosis is carried out through the Poverty Stoplight, the families set goals to green (improve) the yellow and red ones, for which they receive advice and support from Fundación Paraguaya.

Thus, in the second stage of the survey (the second stoplight), the percentage of families that is now green in their savings indicator rose to 32.52%, and the other negative indicators fell to 25.39% (yellow) and 41% (red). In this way, more than 5.7% of the families surveyed managed to have their first savings.

The executive director of the Fundación Paraguaya, PhD. Martín Burt, stressed that the economic growth of families depends not only on the generation of fixed income or the diversification of these, but also on the ability to save.

“Savings is essential for two reasons. One, to take advantage of the opportunities that always present themselves; and the other is to endure the unexpected events that also happen, such as illnesses or accidents that one cannot foresee and if they do not have savings, they generally lose everything. Fundación Paraguaya has been promoting financial education and savings for 36 years. Currently, from Fundación Paraguaya we are encouraging over 150,000 Paraguayan families -who work in the informal sector of the economy- to save. They do not save with us because we are not a financial intermediary and we do not take deposits, but we do require that with the training we provide for them they set aside 10% of all their movements to face the difficulties,” he said.