A Problem of Global Proportions
The World Bank defines “extreme poverty” as living on less than $1.90 per person per day. If you think this is just happening in the fourth world...somewhere out there, in countries that hardly ever touch our lives, we may need to rethink this. "Global extreme poverty rose in 2020 for the first time in over 20 years as the disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic compounded the forces of conflict and climate change, which were already slowing poverty reduction progress. About 120 million additional people are living in poverty as a result of the pandemic, with the total expected to rise to about 150 million by the end of 2021." Due to COVID-19, 150 million people may slide into extreme poverty in 2021.
Poverty rates in the United States were mitigated by the CARES act, but not evenly. According Frontline, "before the pandemic, the monthly poverty rate for white individuals was 11 percent, versus nearly 24 percent for Black and Hispanic individuals. While the estimated poverty rate crept up to 12.3 percent for white individuals in August, it increased to 26.3 percent for Black individuals and 26.9 percent for Hispanic individuals that same month. In other words, the poverty gap between white people and Black and Hispanic people widened during the pandemic."
“We’re seeing in the data that racial and ethnic minorities are more likely to have lost their jobs,” “They’re less likely to be able to work from home.”
“Those living in poverty are the very source of all human ideals. It is through injustice that humanity discovered justice; through hate, love; through contempt, dignity; through tyranny, the equality of all human beings.”
JOSEPH WRESINSKI,
Who was Father Joseph Wresinski?
Joseph Wresinski was an ordained priest. He served in industrial and rural parishes, and right from the beginning he had a special connection with the most deprived families. Joseph's bishop assigned him to be chaplain to 250 families in an emergency housing camp in Noisy-le-Grand, near Paris.
What did he accomplish?
Wresinski’s action has had far reaching political effects around the world, reflected in the many achievements of the organization he founded. Among these achievements are:- universal health care in France;
- free access to school in Guatemala;
- the United Nations Guiding principles on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights which recognizes that extreme poverty is a violation of human rights;
- the concept of “Leave No One Behind” as a cornerstone of UN Sustainable Development Goals.
His work continues through The Joseph Wresinski Center, JWC.
Over the years the JWC received hundreds of requests and visits from people living in extreme poverty, students, actors in the field and academics. These requests are testament to the various objectives being achieved:
- Overcoming the neglect and denial of poverty, dispelling misconceptions about it and making the many different aspects of poverty in the past and present better understood.
- Making all these struggles and actions more widely known and learning from them to break out of the vicious circles of well-meaning or right-thinking schemes that are never designed nor assessed with the people who live in extreme poverty
- Enabling researchers in disciplines such as history, sociology, political sciences, philosophy, medicine and education to construct knowledge and develop ways of thinking based on the outcomes of more than 60 years of struggles and research conducted by ATD Fourth World.
- Supporting the creation of books, testimonies, works of fiction, comics, films and exhibitions that detail the significant efforts towards eradicating poverty and encourage people to become involved.
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