I am Justin Wedes, a co-founder of Detroit Water Brigade, a non-profit advocacy and rapid relief organization responding to the city’s aggressive water shut-off program. I work on water issues with low-income families, the homeless, and unemployed people in Detroit and Flint. In Detroit and Flint, people have been facing multiple ongoing crises that arise…
By Isadora Gotts (United States) I’ve always had a very specific picture of what poverty looks like in my mind. I see a man that I came across when I was 7 or 8. It was a December night and I was coming out of a restaurant with my parents. On our way back to…
The Roles We Play: Recognising the Contribution of People in Poverty is a collection of photographic portraits that explores the roles played by those living in poverty within their families, communities and society at large. The work highlights their efforts, validates their achievements and challenges the negative attitudes often held towards vulnerable and excluded families…
By Matt Davies (Mexico) News of President Obama’s call for more federal funding to tackle the “humanitarian crisis” of child migrants has attracted a lot of media attention. The US Department of Homeland Security has apprehended 52,000 unaccompanied child migrants crossing the border since last October. What seems to have driven the recent increase in…
By: Donald Lee (United States) The International Committee for October 17 welcomes and appreciates the theme chosen by the United Nations, in consultation with activists, civil society and non-governmental organizations, for the 2014 commemoration of the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty. The choice of this theme underscores the United Nations’ recognition of the…
By: Ben Fehsenfeld (United States) What does it mean to have a right to housing? I was wondering this when I was working with the ATD Fourth World team in Geneva, Switzerland a few years ago. Being American, I’d heard of civil rights, sure, but not so much about human rights in general. ATD Fourth…
By Matt Davies (Mexico) I’ve recently been lucky enough to attend several cultural events in Mexico City organised as part of the “Festival de México”. Music, film, theatre, all offered free by the city government as part of the huge array of cultural programmes available to those of us living in this fascinating city. My…
[vimeo https://vimeo.com/75099286 width=”800″ height=”450″] This video was originally posted as part of the Unheard Voices project. “UNHEARD VOICES tells the story of how men and women living in extreme poverty can transform our societies and contribute to building a fairer world. In Dakar, youngsters from a very poor neighbourhood rally to transform an environmental disaster into…
By: Ben Fehsenfeld (United States) When we pass someone on the street she knows exactly what we think of her. How? Malcolm Gladwell explains that when we see someone, a micro-expression crosses our face, lasting a few hundredths of a second and revealing our inner feelings. They’re short enough that if you blink, you’ll miss…
By Sarah Kenningham (United Kingdom) Human Rights are about human beings! Raquel Rolnik, UN Special Rapporteur on Housing, had to insist upon this point when taking questions from journalists at a press conference on the 11th to highlight the preliminary findings of her two-week monitoring visit to the UK. TV cameras, journalists and campaigners were left jostling…
Together in Dignity 