- ATD Fourth World

In Haiti, for eight nights now our team has been sleeping in a yard behind the Fourth World House, grouped together with about a hundred people from the neighborhood.

Since the news of the earthquake, members of ATD Fourth World on every continent have often stopped what they were doing to come together, to not be alone with worry, not knowing what has become of families living in extreme poverty, of our Volunteer Corps members, of friends. We do not want to be alone to hear the news of those who are safe, we do not want to be alone when we hear from those who have lost loved ones.

Our friends in Haiti tell us, "Nighttime is when we weep, it is when, together, we shake with fear, we pray, we sing, we draw strength for the next day to continue looking for those we have not heard from, to be together in the face of death."

The heart of the night is the time for gathering strength in order to face, together, the lack of food and drinking water. It is a time for trying to glimpse how things that might build the future could somehow be part of the urgency constraining the present. The team already plans to continue its early childhood program "Bébés Bienvenus" because it is the youngest children who are the most vulnerable.

The heart of the night is the time for drawing strength to think about what to do next and where to go together, given that the community where these families live remains at high risk.

"We are hoping that what we are going through is not a tragedy but a trial, one that must enable us to become closer to one another. This must be a page of history common to us all," says Jacqueline Plaisir, a member of ATD Fourth World’s Volunteer Corps in Haiti.

What about us?

How can we help keep one another from drowning in the avalanche of images and news? The media bears witness to a vital international solidarity; and yet this solidarity risks remaining untethered and pointless in such an ocean of suffering, of lives buried, of destruction—unless it becomes linked with the solidarity that is rising up from the deepest heart of Haiti, of its history, of its soul, rising up with its people’s hands, with their courage, their minds and their faith.

In many places there, families living in extreme poverty remain alone. They know that unless they manage to help themselves, no one else will do so. The Haitian writer, Dany Laferrière, said in an interview, "After the earthquake, what saved this city was the energy of the poorest people. Thanks to them, Port-au-Prince is still alive."

How can we help one another to be together in the spirit of what Fr. Joseph Wresinski once wrote, words we quoted in the greeting cards we sent out just weeks ago: "People living in persistent poverty are not asking us to slow down our progress; on the contrary, they are pushing us to go faster and farther, to have a broader vision and to be more ambitious than we are"?

Today how can we, from around the world, be together and be part of a movement together so that Haiti can lead us to discover the urgency behind Wresinski’s words in every place where we make a commitment and take action?

This is what we must make room for in our daily lives and work, and in what we say publicly. This is what will transform the ATD Fourth World Movement. Connecting our daily lives to Haiti today means showing that wherever we are, just as much is at stake. As a Movement, we are not categorizing different levels of urgency; on every continent we are faced with extreme poverty causing "injustice and violence every which way." [1] .

When Haiti suffers, the world suffers.
When Haiti moves forward, the world moves forward.
We are all part of a single human community moving ahead.

Eugen Brand
Director General