Participant Perspective
"Who can change the world without me?"
- Ivenson, youth delegate from Haiti
It Takes a Child to Raise a Village: International Assembly Participant Perspective (by Elise Caves)
Three weeks ago I had the honor—along with over seventy other delegates, volunteers, and supporters—of
participating in ATD Fourth World’s international assembly honoring the International Day for the
Eradication of Poverty on Oct 17. And even though I got to do a lot of the publicity for the assembly,
it took me until the end to understand why it was so important. The crazy part? Two months ago, I had
never even heard of the organization.
After graduating from UCLA earlier this year I moved to New York City with big plans to put to use my
vast expertise in international development, gleaned from four whole years of classes on the subject,
to change the world. If you know any recent college grads, I’m sure this sentiment sounds familiar.
My quest for that dream job eventually led me to an informational interview at the United Nations, where
I met members of the UN NGO branch, who maintain relations between the UN and the many nonprofit organizations
with similar goals. Our conversation was peppered with references to “ATD Fourth World,” a mysterious NGO that
they all supported and agreed would be a fascinating, challenging, and frankly, cool place to work. That night
I sent off an application. Weeks later, I began working with Fourth World Movement’s National Center team doing
final preparations for the Oct 17th Assembly. And two weeks ago, I was there as the delegates arrived; I sat in
on meetings as they met and discussed their experiences with poverty and social exclusion; and I finally
understood why the assembly was so important.
I once learned a parable about two sisters who receive Jesus into their home, and (to make a long story short)
He chides the one who spends the entire visit in action—cooking, cleaning, and working to make Him comfortable—in
favor of her sister, who simply sits and listens to His teachings. I haven’t thought about it in years, but that
story has always seemed counter-intuitive to me. I bring it up because two weeks ago I finally got it: it’s so
easy to hide behind acts of service—feed the hungry, house the homeless, clothe the destitute—but in order to truly
make a difference, you have to make a connection. Solving human problems requires copious and diverse human input,
and while my sincere desire to make a difference was a start, I was all too willing to keep such work in an academic
comfort zone.
I don’t think I’m alone in my mistake, and I know I’m lucky to have found my way into an organization so focused
on reminding everyone to connect with issues like poverty on the level of human reality, not statistics. As Jill,
the National Director pointed out to me, these delegates we brought together are, in many cases, those statistics.
The crucial difference? Unlike numbers, people can tell you what poverty means, offer advice, and build solutions.
Numbers are safe, and don’t force people like me to move so far outside our comfort zones. True, itemizing and
meeting the needs of people living in poverty is difficult enough, but ending extreme poverty altogether is simply
too complex to be accomplished without the personal input of those who know it best.
--Elise Caves is a recent graduate from the University of California (Los Angeles), did an internship from mid-September
to mid-October 2010 and worked on social media communications and welcoming the delegates at the "It Takes a Child to
Raise a Village" assembly.
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