Acute poverty is multi-faceted – There are many ways to measure it and analyse it.  This website will help you learn more about it and about how it can be tackled.

First it is important to understand the many aspects of poverty and ask oneself what poverty is, what the latest estimates of acute poverty are, who the people are who live in acute poverty and what the characteristics of acute poverty are.  Also important is to track closely the much needed foreign aid contributions by countries like Canada.

Poverty takes many forms. First, it deprives families of their health. Fighting acute poverty requires tackling health challenges, such as vaccine-preventable diseases,  illnesses due to the three pandemics (AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria), malnutrition  and lack of sanitation , as well as participating in the R&D effort for tropical diseases.

The struggle against poverty also needs to address the education gaps found in the Global South, in particular tackling education challenges in low income countries through the Global Partnership for Education and lower middle income countries through the Education Financing Facility, and making sure the Canadian contribution to global education , in particular to basic education, is sustained.

Finally, ending acute poverty presupposes that economic opportunities are made available for all.  That means fostering the right strategies for economic inclusion as discussed at the 2018 Ultra-Poverty Summit, with special emphasis on microfinance , microinsurance  and graduation programs.

Each of this website’s sections on poverty, health, education and economic opportunity contains self-contained capsules on key specific topics, including a set of questions to support self-directed learning and links to documents of reference and to key organizations.