Consultancy introduces tool to address poverty

The National National

By Glenda Awikiak
Papua New Guinea employee and employer productivity levels have dropped because of a lack of knowledge of poverty, says director of Paradise Development Consultancy Ghandi Katao.
Paradise has now partnered with Foundation Paraguay and introduced a tool that targets families to address poverty situations.
The tool was launched on Friday in Port Moresby.
The tool called Poverty Spotlight is a method that allows families to measure their own level of poverty, and identify and create customised strategies to solve their specific situations.
The tool was developed in Paraguay and has been used in more than 10 countries.
It has helped families and communities identify their own problems and provided solutions to solve their own problems.
The main areas the tool is going to highlight and to show the families to identify their poverty situations are;

  • Income and employment;
  • health and environment;
  • housing and infrastructure;
  • education and culture;
  • organisation and participation; and,
  • inferiority and motivation.

“We will be working with interested Government agencies as well private companies and businesses to evaluate their employees to make self-assessment on their poverty situations,” Katao said.
“We will link them to available service providers to their problem, or give the assessment to the employer and provide certain directions to the employer on how it can help a particular situation of its employee.
“This is part of the global initiative to eradicate poverty.
“We would like to help companies and Government agencies identify problems, and better welfare of employees that will improve productivity.”