Quality education for all

Since the early 2010s, access to quality education for all has been at the heart of ATD Fourth World’s priorities. In this series, you will learn about the work done by ATD Fourth World teams in the field of education, including early childhood education.

Publications showcasing ATD’s educational achievements will be published regularly in the coming months. These accounts tell the story of ATD Fourth World initiatives and their collaborations with children, families, and communities.

We will explore teams dedicated to supporting specific aspects of children’s lives and development. One team aims to reinforce family ties, another assists with children’s schooling and academic success, and another contributes to the cultural enrichment of neighborhood children…

Each of these narratives threads together to form a vibrant framework for a society that can offer quality education for all — including children in poverty.

Story Garden

This month, our education series visits Gallup, New Mexico, and the Story Garden that ATD Fourth World started there.

In 2010, a team of ATD Fourth World Volunteer Corps members moved to Gallup: a city that borders the Navajo nation and is in a high desert region.

Karen Stornelli, an ATD Fourth World Volunteer Corps member, tells us about her team’s first steps in Gallup: from learning about the region, and the first meetings the team had in 2010, to the development of the Story Garden in an open air Gallup market.

Ultimately, Karen Stornelli’s story is an example of how Volunteer Corps members build a project from the ground up in a new location.

She helps us explore the questions: how do we meet people living in communities or neighborhoods new to us? How do we work together with people in poverty to build projects that do not impose? And how do we, from the outset, build a project based on the needs of people in poverty, guided by their input?

Cultural projects

The story of Gallup is as much about education as it is about culture, as cultural projects enrich and support the efforts of communities to educate their children.

These projects give children opportunities to learn about their culture, often giving excluded children cultural access they wouldn’t otherwise have. These projects bring pride to children and their families as they demonstrate the cultural richness they all have inside themselves.

In order to help provide a better future for their children, parents agree to come together — even if it means overcoming isolation, hostility, and/or their fears — to build spaces where their children can grow. This helps to create an environment where greater solidarity, togetherness, and communities can blossom.These actions are therefore crucial to ATD Fourth World, as they are at the heart of community living.

Read about the Story Garden in Gallup, New Mexico.