The Students Taking on Poverty (STOP) Campaign is a nation-wide, student-led effort to address and combat issues of poverty. We seek to empower students to confront these issues through three avenues: information, motivation, and action. We are dedicated to connecting our conversations and research about the issues with actual deeds to tangibly affect change and "take on" poverty. We understand that poverty is a broad issue and STOP aims to cultivate diverse approaches to taking on poverty from as many perspectives as possible. At the core of the STOP mission, though, is the development of its individual members. We aspire to truly challenge ourselves, our ideas about poverty and how we can deal with it. By doing so, we hope to lay bare the priorities that perpetuate debilitating economic hardship and develop individuals who will meaningfully take on poverty for the rest of their lives.
The STOP campaign originated as a month-long project undertaken by the Harvard Black Students Association (BSA). This relationship is indicative of the disproportionate number of people of color who feel the regrettable weight of poverty. The STOP Campaign continues to recognize the unfortunate intersection between race and poverty around the world, and we are committed to taking steps to reduce this correlation. However, we also strive to tackle the universal effects of poverty and how it touches people from all cultures and backgrounds.