The Experience of Poverty

Poverty is broader and deeper than income level.

Poverty means being trapped in a run-down community that lacks resources, knowing that your children are not receiving the same quality education as others, having to swallow your pride when applying for a much-needed benefit or service, being told to be grateful for the little you do have, or being made to feel ashamed for needing any kind of support. For people who experience it, poverty means that you "are always under somebody’s thumb,” disempowered by cultural norms and social systems. 

Persistent poverty is not simply a “poor people’s” problem.

Poverty is the measurement of injustice in our whole society, like other structural oppression, rooted in the belief that some human beings are worth less than others. Refusing this discrimination, as a community, ATD Fourth World is actively and concretely engaged in deconstructing such oppression by creating new ways of being together.

We are all part of the solution. We cannot look to other people to fix this oppression for us. Those among us who are on the frontlines of these battles for justice must be acknowledged and supported as leaders. Their resistance to hardship is the starting point of ATD Fourth World’s movement to overcome poverty.