- ATD Fourth World

On the 24th of January, Madame Alwine de Vos van Steenwijk passed away peacefully. Her strength that she had given without hesitation or calculation to build our movement finally left her. She was 90 years old.

At the end of the 1950s, when Madame de Vos was a diplomat in Paris for her country, the Netherlands, she heard about Fr. Joseph Wresinski and his battle alongside the families in the emergency housing camp of Noisy-Le-Grand. Shocked by the dreadful conditions in which families were living, she was drawn by the originality of what they were undertaking with Fr. Joseph. She decided to take the dusty dirt track to the camp; she wanted to talk with Fr. Joseph. He suggested that she help by sorting the myriad items donated for the families in the camp - a depressing task, as many were torn and dirty. Alwine was upset to realise that, by trying to help those in poverty, people of her own social background were humiliating them. She urged them to be useful, not by sending old shoes, but by helping her to set up a research institute.

Thus Madame de Vos lay the foundations of the Bureau for Social Research which gave fresh credibility to the Movement’s cause. It is still developing today within the framework of the International Joseph Wresinski Center. Her work marked the start of a skilful and energetic campaign for the world of science to take into account the experiences and thoughts of families in chronic poverty. Hundreds of texts of all descriptions bear witness to the determination of Madame de Vos to bring together and share the knowledge acquired and developed day by day so that the world would learn from it and free itself from the grip of extreme poverty and violence.

On January 26, the international symposium, "Poverty is Violence- Break the Silence- Pathways towards Peace," concluded with a meeting at UNESCO. This participatory research project begun three years ago brings together different sources of knowledge from a diversity of people. It reminds us that in organizing the International Symposium on Extreme Poverty in 1964 at UNESCO, Fr. Joseph and Alwine de Vos prepared the ground for the acquisition of knowledge founded on reciprocity among people of different backgrounds.

Following this, Fr. Joseph asked Alwine de Vose to become an ambassador for his own people with the aim of enabling the Fourth World to climb the steps of the United Nations and become a new participant in international public life where the future of the human community is debated developed and shaped. She never left a meeting with a top official without having asked the questions, "What shall I say to families in extreme poverty" "What commitments are you prepared to make?"

After Fr. Joseph died, her chief preoccupation became to make his life known. She wrote the first biography of Fr. Joseph and worked on the creation of the two volumes "Ecrits et Paroles du Père Joseph" (The words of Father Joseph )). She devoted all her energy to ensuring that the actions and thoughts of Wresinski should be not only be recognised in their own right, but should also be more accessible and talked about, thus remaining sources of inspiration, not only in his own church, but also in political, scientific and cultural spheres. It was the first step toward developing the International Joseph Wresinski Center.

Over the last few years, in the Netherlands, Madame de Vos embarked on a wonderful experience of theatrical production with actor and professional director Laurens Umans together with families facing the exclusion and ultimately the injustice of extreme poverty. Their highly artistic plays of great depth opened and inspired the hearts and minds of many audiences of all cultural, social, spiritual and political horizons throughout the country and Europe as a whole. A few hours before she died, she said to those around her, "Tell the families I love them."