- ATD Fourth World

"The true experts on poverty are the poorest people themselves, so it is vital that we see them as partners in a prospective reflection on Europe".
As Claude Ferrand has just told you, opening up such a dialogue is not at all easy. It is important that we provide the means or resources so that those who have continuously been denied their freedom of speech, education and culture n the past are finally able to express their views and make themselves heard.
But that in itself is not enough; their views must also be taken on board if a new understanding of poverty is to emerge. So poor people must also help to devise and create action plans.

We have therefore experimented with these requirements within the context of the Fourth World Partnership programme. Dialogue and the joint creation of action methods are possible if we really do provide the means for them to become a reality. For all our disassociation from a 'form of mock participation', which claims to listen to the poor but doesn't really understand them and claims to give them room to speak (while rarely actually doing so), the poor are in fact unable to influence the decisions that directly concern them or on the approaches that impact their lives to such an extent.
If we are to be able to work together, we must first recognise poor people as full players in their own right. We must acknowledge that they have a power and knowledge that cannot be ignored and that can help us in our action plans and programmes aimed at diminishing, indeed eradicating poverty.

But they won't be established as players overnight. The situation is very non-egalitarian at the start.
Indeed, power and knowledge are unevenly distributed from the outset.
Whereas in the world of professionals, institutions and politics, the respective players immediately assume a very high position within the dialogue, poor players assume a much lower one from the beginning:

• Professionals have socially recognised knowledge, whereas the poor have a knowledge that has yet to be recognised and a priori has no legitimate basis in our society;

• professionals also distinguish themselves by their skills in expression, enunciation, abstraction and intellectualisation, etc. We know just how much authority such cultural abilities can give to those who possess it;

• professionals know how to play the game. Due to their status and position they have the authority to take action and make decisions. Poor people, on the other hand, are often the 'subjects' of this authority but they are more used to being treated as 'objects' - objects of procedures, decisions, measures, rules and occasionally of concern or debates, but objects all the same.

Ensuring the conditions for a genuine crossroads of knowledge presupposes a 'crossroads of authority' too. It presupposes the management of the authority that professional players (whom we refer to as experts, contributors, politicians, etc.) inevitably have from the outset. That implies building up and reinforcing the bit of power which the poor have at their disposal.
The aim is to meet the preconditions for a reciprocal relationship based on the fundamental acceptance of the knowledge, views and positions of people from both sides.

The programme presented us with several prerequisites and demands that have to be met if players from different backgrounds are to be enabled to work together.

In the face of such one-sided exchanges it is crucial that the players from poor backgrounds are not in any way dependent on or fall within the authority of the other players. To ensure that knowledge from both sides is equally represented, poor people must be able to share their thoughts and have their say free from any hold over their own life. There can be no kind of partnership if the dependency or subservience of one party is going to lead to an unbalanced exchange.
Poor people know only too well that the poorer you are, the more you have to depend on professionals; the weaker you are, the stronger the hold that professionals have over you, even in the most private areas of your life. In fact, the poorer you are, the more afraid you are of those who want to help you or make decisions on your behalf.

Poor people can only speak out if they are part of an association which supports them. If they are not part of an association they run the risk of being crushed beneath the weight of the knowledge and authority of the other players.
Poor people should be able to engage in exchanges as a group, namely a group that is sure of itself and that prepares what it is going to say; a group every member of which can make himself heard without being judged or having to back up his ideas with arguments. This preparation is essential if the two sets of players are to work together.
In the programme, the poor players were all members of the ATD Fourth World Movement and they benefited from the presence of a referral agent who, during the intervals of the meetings with the other players, encouraged the work done and progress made by the weakest contributors, in an effort to help everyone put their ideas together.

The best way of actually assimilating the various points of view in order to gain new knowledge on the topic of poverty and thereby improve the methods employed by the players is to engage in a joint production.
In this programme the players themselves determined the topics and ideas that were to be addressed. The aim here was to both reflect on and improve the interaction between professionals and the poor. But again it was the players themselves who defined the issues at the centre of these interactions.
We will come back to this. Each of these issues was combined into a joint written statement. This requirement guarantees that the different points of view will be discussed extensively. However clear the points seemed to be when they were discussed orally, differences continually emerged when it came to actually putting them down on paper. We would like to emphasise here how important it is to maintain these different points of view so as to avoid a text that glosses over important points for the sake of producing a polished end product. The exchanges between the players generally result in a joint analysis. But if an agreement cannot be reached, an inappropriate agreement must not be made on the pretext that everyone has to work together. These different points of view must be respected, not eliminated.

The provision of this reciprocal training therefore brought together professionals and activists, yet at the same time it was this very issue that formed the subject of their discussions. They discussed the obstacles that were emerging during their discussions and the measures they could take to overcome them.
The players therefore identified several challenges and opinions in the exchanges between the professionals and the institutions, and those living in conditions of poverty. The players defined these issues as problems that they were dealing with and, at the same time, that they had partly experienced in the meetings and confrontations.

These were the following:
The relevance of the views of an individual within the context of institutions' viewpoints.
Often the views held by people and by institutions fail to acknowledge one other, run up against each other and clash. The beliefs of the institutions often carry more weight and make themselves more widely heard.
Nevertheless, each person shares a common aim which is to provide people in difficult situations with better living conditions and to make sure that basic human rights are respected.
How can we see to it that each player's views are taken into account (according to his knowledge, his position and his specific interests). Furthermore, how do we develop his ideas so that they are registered with and integrated into the principles of the institution?

The second problem dealt with refers to knowledge and impressions:
Any knowledge that professionals have about poor populations is often based on negative judgements and impressions and, in the same way, very poor people have a negative opinion of professionals and the world of institutions which is further enforced by an often very difficult life. People judge others on the basis of what they know (e.g. their experiences, their job and their position). 

These representations are the source of mutual misunderstandings.
So how can we change our impressions? How can we get the poor and professionals to communicate with one another and share their frames of reference? How can we compare our sources of information and establish a way to share knowledge and alter the methods we use?
Putting all this knowledge together only makes sense if we are looking to find new information that will help us in our actions and come up with new methods that will improve the living conditions of those suffering the consequences of extreme poverty.

The third problem is the nature of the relationship between professionals and the poor.
This relationship is often regarded as unsatisfactory. The poor are not content with the relationship because they resent the fact that people do not trust them and because they do not feel their views are being taken into account. When describing this relationship they use words and phrases such as suspicion, spite, and abuse of power, or even violence. 
But professionals do not consider the relationship to be satisfactory, when, for example, the poor do not share their views. In such cases the poor are regarded as incapable and unwilling and disrespectful of the professionals' activity or indeed lacking faith in it.
How can we improve the relationship between professionals and the poor? How can we develop the nature of this relationship so that it transcends both sides' fears of each other, so that each person's responsibilities and expectations are clearly defined, so that the views espoused and language used by both sides are clearly understood and so that both time and everyone's relationship with it is taken into account?

The fourth problem concerns initiatives and risk-taking.
The programme showed us that professionals and the world of institutions are far from being the only ones to take initiatives and risks. In fact, the risks taken by those in difficult situations with regard to themselves or their environment are mostly ignored or poorly understood.
To take an initiative is to deal with something head on, not give in to it. This does not necessarily involve risk. By taking a risk you are not only putting yourself in danger but also other people or institutions.
How can we see to it that both sides acknowledge the initiatives and risks taken by each other?
How can we devise a constructive means of interaction between the risks taken by a professional within his institution and those taken by a poor person within his environment?
These initiatives and risks are only worthwhile if they actually bring about lasting changes and innovations.

The fifth problem concerns participation and the preconditions for being players together.
This is a high-priority issue which seeks to question the degree of influence that the poor have in devising action plans and in preparing and implementing projects. It is high-priority because citizen participation (involving all citizens), is a fundamental cornerstone of democracy. Poverty is a democratic deficit because it prevents equal participation by all citizens. Participation is without a doubt the most efficient and democratic way of combating poverty.
In this instance participation means being involved in a project from beginning to end. It means being involved at all stages, from planning to decision-making and finally evaluation.
What conditions have to be met to ensure the active participation of each player? How can we all be players together?

The reciprocal training programme is proof that it is possible, in some cases, to work in unison and tackle these problems together. Furthermore it has shown us how important it is to include the poor in these exchanges and in the development of programmes that concern them, so that all the parties involved are recognised as having a certain degree of expertise and knowledge on the subject of poverty, and so that each party is willing to take on board and discuss each other's views.