Today it is popular to make fun of or to condemn the forms that caring and help took on over the ages. People ridicule “daddy’s way of giving,” and “good works.” People even attack “charity ladies” personally.
In fact, if the approach to others can show new qualities today, it’s first of all because the needs of the poor are different. It’s also because it has been shaped and nourished by the sum of deprivations, hardships, efforts and faithfulness to the poor on the part of everyone whose heart beat yesterday with enough love to love them beyond themselves. Furthermore, we think that if the teams in Noisy have been able to develop and accomplish their action, described in these pages, the credit goes to those who, before us, discovered the depth of extreme poverty and who suffered a lot to do what we are doing.
We are therefore convinced that our action is the extension of an overall action which, spanning the centuries, was undertaken on behalf of happiness and that is a part of the current effort to bring a genuine answer to the sorrow and the adversity of human beings.
Moreover, it’s not sure that this denigration of “daddy’s way of giving” does not hide disappointments arising from approaches intending to be different, but which are different, in fact, more in their formulation than in their spirit.
Charity cannot be improvised, nor carried on empirically. It is the fruit of knowledge gained through a reciprocal commitment, that is demanding and faithful, by persons who love one another. In short, the love of the poor is comparable to the friendship of a married couple whose common faithfulness has withstood sorrows, disappointments and disasters.
Having inherited a tradition of charity, nourished by the realities of extended relationships, the Fourth World teams (2) know that no promotion is possible unless, alongside the poor, human beings are committed day and night to helping them to take the necessary steps. The biggest obstacle to this promotion is the poor people’s certainty that their efforts are in vain. This is why members of the team consider the first pre-requisites for genuine service are presence and a community of shared destiny. It is not a matter of being leaders, but faithful and attentive caretakers who walk with the poor, serving them and bringing out of their midst potential leaders who will guide their community toward a better future. With respect to this community that they are building together, they will ground it on the very essence of every community, this is: harmony, trust and security.
In a secure and respected community, a poor person will be able to forge his own destiny, and to provide for members of his group: he will house them, clothe them and feed them. Their health, the love with which he wants to fill their hearts, the strengths which their inner selves need, he will provide them with all of this. In a community on the way toward promotion, a poor person will become involved in his own promotion, whether it be professional or social. He will be aware that respect is earned only by someone who has shaped himself and who has shaped those who surround him.
Doubtlessly, the promotion of the poor puts demands on us, but these should be requested and expressed by the poor. A poor person should contribute his effort and his good will. He should give in turn, even if it means taking back tomorrow what he had offered today, and then perhaps giving it back again, until he finally realizes that the gift of oneself is the only way to love oneself and to love members of his group.
On the other hand, a poor person is entitled, in particular, to demand help that is carefully planned, thought out, efficient, and that ensures that he be taken seriously, and can believe that people really love him and members of his group. He must know that people are willing to pay whatever price for him to acquire the right to be a human being like everyone else.
Charity then is no small matter; it eschews all that is empirical, improvised, and mediocre. It turns the poor person into an artisan of the health of members of his group and of the promotion of his community. Such is the fabric of the action which, day by day, the poor and the team have woven together…
(1)The magazine Igloos [author’s footnote found on p. 47 in the original version]. As early as 1960, Father Joseph launches a newsletter whose name recalls that in France families housed in living conditions unworthy of human beings, by their courage to go on living, call for brotherhood and justice. With a mother from the emergency housing shelter and a volunteer using a discarded duplicator, he creates what is going to become the first and until now the only magazine containing information and analyses about persistent poverty in Europe. From the start it carries accurate information about what the families are experiencing and thinking, calls for concrete collaboration and a religious thought. (2)The earlier name, ATD Teams, used here in the original French version, would become the Fourth World Volunteer Corps after Joseph Wresinski coined the term “Fourth World” to stand for the inherent strength and dignity of underprivileged families who are the inheritors of generations of poor families, going back to and beyond the French Revolution who have proudly struggled for justice and brotherhood. [Translator’s note.]