The International Movement ATD Fourth World is a nonprofit organization working towards the eradication of chronic poverty through a human-rights based approach.
Joseph Wresinski used this term as one that evoked the aspirations of creating a new world order, and that held promise and hope for families living in extreme poverty.
He believed that every man or woman he met represented an opportunity in fighting poverty and he was determined that ATD Fourth World would remain open to people of all cultures, faiths and races.
His appointment to France’s Economic and Social Council in 1979 was a significant step in his quest for official representation of people in extreme poverty.
It paved the way for the creation of the RMI (revenu minimum d'insertion, a French type of social welfare aimed at people of working age who have not worked sufficient hours to enjoy contributions-based unemployment benefits), and for a law designing a framework for fighting social exclusion that was adopted by France in July 1998.
ATD Fourth World has teams or active members in Belgium, Bolivia, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Canada, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, France and Reunion Island, Germany, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Ireland, Italy, the Ivory Coast, Lebanon, Luxemburg, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritius, Mexico, the Netherlands, Peru, the Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Senegal, Spain, Switzerland, Tanzania, Thailand, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America.
On 17 October 1987, in the presence of 100,000 people from every social background and continent,[5] Joseph Wresinski unveiled a commemorative stone at the Trocadero Human Rights Plaza in Paris.
[6] 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.
Rather than distributing emergency aid, ATD Fourth World seeks to create sustainable cultural projects designed together with people living in great poverty.
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.
As well as having a permanent delegation at the European Union and holding general consultative status with UNICEF, UNESCO, ECOSOC, the International Labour Organization and participatory status at the Council of Europe, ATD Fourth World takes part in public debates and conferences to change the way society thinks about poverty and to invite individuals and institutions to unite in creating a world without poverty.
The Joseph Wresinski Archives and Research Centre (JWC) aims to assemble, protect and promote the stories and histories of people living in chronic poverty, through all types of medium (written, audio, video, film, photo, objects).
What is unseen to most experts in the field of poverty is the story of real people – the mother who goes to the rubbish dump every day to work so her children can go to school; the father who walks the streets looking for work so he can bring home food to his family; the woman who refuses to be re-housed out of her cemetery home because she cannot bear to have a better life while others are left behind".