Spring 2021 Newsletter - Director's Message
Dear friends,
We have been together in this pandemic for more than a year. Today, the light at the end of the tunnel might be in sight. What can we learn from this difficult experience? As an organization whose vitality comes from a sense of togetherness and community with and among people with a direct experience of poverty, this pandemic could have stopped us. It did not.
Building a community that is always open, always growing, is at the core of who we are. What was the impact of the pandemic on who we are? Because of the lack of physical interaction and despite many efforts to meet in responsible ways, being together had to evolve. Together, we started national Community Calls. Our response to the forced isolation caused by Covid-19 was to extend our connections and to open the horizons of who we are together as a community. One year later, it seems that it was useful:
“The Community Calls gave me a heads up as to what to expect before Covid hit here in Virginia,” Jarvis said recently. “It hit New York and you could watch it move. And we knew what to expect. It gave us a way to prepare before it even hit.”
For many of us, building a bigger, more solid digital community was one response to the pandemic. But that did not work for everyone. Sometimes our links are too fragile and life is too hard. Because of this, now is the time to be even more present to those who cannot join our digital community. Many ATD Fourth World initiatives are designed with this need in mind. Actions like in New Orleans where a Volunteer Cops member is patiently sending postcards to the many people she knows in the community; and in New York City where weekly visits in Brownsville assure no one is forgotten; and in New Mexico where a new project, Story Garden on Wheels, was started to reach families in the most remote areas.
Today we are all aware that our ATD Fourth World community is locally rooted in places where life is difficult, and that our community also promises a wider horizon. That’s one thing we have learned through this pandemic: belonging to ATD Fourth World is about bonds without the boundaries of class, race, or where we live. It is about this community where each person can be themselves, grow and learn, regardless of where we are. Our digital community ends up adding to the physical one, reinforcing it without being a substitute for it - it just brings more connections!
Please, talk about ATD Fourth World around you, invite people to join us, share our newsletters and the gift of this global community you belong to!
Sincerely yours,
Guillaume Charvon
National Director
PS: Check out Singing on the Porch, an illustrated digital book based on stories that emerged from ATD Fourth World Community Calls.