#PovertyTruths: Work: Let’s think again
Poverty Truths
Work: Let’s think again
Dear Friends,
“GMTO” (Get Money. Take Over.) is Damien’s new tattoo. Damien, 18 years old, works at WALTER, the eco-social business recently launched by ATD Fourth World USA in Brownsville, New York. He told me, “Money is freedom. That’s how you can eat and go to the movies. ‘Take over’ is to have control over your life. You need money for that.”
“Jobs are few and far apart,” Jarvis told me when I was visiting him and other ATD Fourth World friends in Virginia. People living in underserved communities and neighborhoods try to get a job but too often land nowhere or in a disposable position, with no positive impact on their life journey. Jobs just keep them in a cycle of poverty and exploitation.
Jobs are the way to emancipate yourself from poverty, but can also be a trap of oppression that keeps people in poverty despite all their efforts [1]. ATD Fourth World sees this over and over when partnering with individuals and families in communities facing challenges of work access. Workers who experience this contradiction in their daily lives can teach our whole society a new way to think about work.
People who face this challenge know how a job can truly lift them out of poverty. For example:
The energy that they put in their work needs to have a positive impact, to make a difference and give them a sense of purpose.
Their jobs have to connect them with others and develop a sense of belonging.
Their jobs should allow them to develop a positive identity for themselves and people around them.
Their jobs should be a door to a better future.
These workers present an opportunity to rethink what it is to work and to have a job. With them, we can learn what it means to work and to feel useful, what it means to be independent and to have a job that fulfills the conditions above. The experience of people who are excluded from these opportunities offers our society a compass to design the type of jobs all people need.
If we take this opportunity to think again about what “work” is, we can transform our society into a place where work, for every individual, is not simply about survival but an opportunity to grow into the best of ourselves, to contribute meaningfully to our communities and to be recognized for our contributions.
As ever,
Guillaume Charvon
National Director
