Background

Poverty alleviation is a common challenge for developing countries and the world. In 2024, Tsinghua University and partner universities in Latin America - the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile and the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro - successfully launched “The China-Latin America Youth Responding to Global Challenges - Poverty Alleviation Challenge” program (Poverty Alleviation Challenge in short) in China, Brazil, and Chile. This initiative sparked intense dialogues on poverty alleviation between China and Latin American countries, with universities as the main participants.

In November 2024, during Chinese President Xi Jinping's visit to Brazil for the 19th G20 Summit, Tsinghua University Party Secretary Qiu Yong and the President of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Roberto Medronho, signed a cooperation agreement on the “The China-Latin America Youth Responding to Global Challenges” program. This agreement was included in the outcomes of Xi Jinping's visit to Brazil and became a significant example of mutually beneficial development between China and Latin America.

We believe that the Poverty Alleviation Challenge holds profound significance:

• Driving China-Latin America’s cooperation: It serves as a platform for the transnational exchange about poverty alleviation for China and Latin America. It also establishes a wide range network involving “government, industry, and academia”. The initiative encourages the participants to create a cross-cultural, cross-disciplinary, replicable, and highly implementable poverty alleviation solution, expanding opportunities for civilizational development and promoting mutually beneficial strategic cooperation between China and Latin America.
• Deepening the liaison mechanism among Chinese and Latin American universities: It aims to integrate the educational resources and the complementarity between different universities in promoting poverty alleviation. On the other hand, the challenge establishes cross-cultural cooperation teams, which helps to nurture globally competent students and inspires a new vision to strengthen friendly cooperation between Chinese and Latin American universities.
• Inspiring mutual learning among Chinese and Latin American youth: It provides Chinese and Latin American youth with valuable opportunities for dialogue. Through mutual learning among civilizations, professional empowerment and competition mechanism, it will improve students’ ability to address poverty alleviation challenges. Moreover, it will enable students to advance side by side, jointly injecting their wisdom and vitality into global development.

Based on the success of the Poverty Alleviation Challenge 2024, we will pursue innovation, deepen the integration of academic resources between Chinese and Latin American universities, support project incubation, and encourage interdisciplinary collaboration to attract outstanding participants and mentors. The goal is to advance the production of high-quality outcomes for poverty alleviation and ensure the implementation of the developed projects.

We believe that based on last year’s achievements, Poverty Alleviation Challenge 2025 will have a wider structure, a deeper cooperation and a broader vision!