2. What is poverty?
• Extreme poverty is the severe lack of material
possessions or money
• poverty is the state of one who lacks a certain amount of
material possessions or money
• Absolute poverty or destitution refers to the deprivation
of basic human needs, which commonly includes
food, water, sanitation, clothing, shelter, health care and
education. Relative poverty is defined contextually
as economic inequality in the location or society in which
people live
3. The International Movement ATD
Fourth World
• The International Movement ATD Fourth World is a nonprofit
organization which aims towards the eradication of chronic poverty
through a human-rights based approach. It works in partnership with
communities across the world to end the exclusion and injustice of
persistent poverty, and focuses on learning from and supporting
families living in poverty, through grass-roots presence and
involvement in disadvantaged communities. Although founded by a
priest, Fr. Joseph Wresinski, ATD (All Together for Dignity) Fourth
World is an organization with no religious or political affiliations. It
runs projects in 32 countries on five continents, and is in touch with
individuals and small non-profits in 146 countries through the Forum
for Overcoming Extreme Poverty
4. International Growth
• ATD Fourth World has teams or active members in Belgium, Bolivia,
Burkina Faso, Canada, America ect. The International Movement
ATD Fourth World strives for the voice of people living in the worst
forms of poverty to be heard at the heart of international institutions,
in order that their viewpoint and aspirations help to shape
international policy. It holds general consultative status at the United
Nations, UNICEF, UNESCO, the ILO and participatory status at
the Council of Europe This gives greater weight to its work in the
human rights field and other essential issues in the fight against
chronic poverty. It also maintains a permanent delegation to
the Europea Union
5. Principles of the Organization
The fight to eradicate poverty - a human rights
approach
• ATD Fourth World seeks to create sustainable cultural
projects designed together with people living in great
poverty
Priority given to people living in the most extreme
situations of poverty
• enabling those with first-hand experience of poverty to
meet policy makers, researchers and others on equal
ground to pool their expertise in the struggle against
poverty.
6. Activities of the organisation
• To promote access to culture and education
• The Organization creates projects aimed at stimulating
access to knowledge, culture and education for all.
Activities aim to show that every person can learn, that
everyone has some knowledge to share and some skill
to use. One such activity that takes place throughout the
world is the Street Library: volunteers go with books to
places where children and their families live in conditions
of extreme poverty. Through reading, crafts and theatre
activities, relationships are built with children and their
families and links are created with the society from which
the families have been marginalised
7. • To promote and support the right to live as a family,
decent work and social well-being
• ATD Fourth World is involved in projects to protect the
right of parents to raise their own children, setting up for
example a Live-In Family Development Programme in
Noisy-le-Grand. Family holiday homes have also been
created – in Frimhurs for example, in the United
Kingdom – which are places where families living in
chronic poverty can go in order to take a break from their
daily struggles. ATD Fourth World also organises
projects aimed at improving disadvantaged communities'
access to decent work and social well-being,
8. impacts
International Day for the Eradication of Poverty
• On 17 October 1987, in the presence of 100,000 people from every
social background and continent, Joseph Wresinski unveiled a
commemorative stone at the Trocadero Human Rights Plaza in
Paris. On this marble stone, his call is engraved: "Wherever men
and women are condemned to live in poverty, human rights are
violated. To come together to ensure that these rights be respected
is our solemn duty." The United Nations declared the 17th October
to be "International Day for the Eradication of Poverty" in
1992. Since then, more than thirty similar Commemorative Stones
have been laid around the world, from Manega, Burkina Faso, to the
European Parliament in Brussels, and from Rizal Park in the
Philippines to the gardens of the United Nations in New York. Each
one bears that same text. In many countries, each 17 October,
people gather for a commemoration in honour of all those who suffer
from extreme poverty, and to renew their commitment to fighting
poverty.
