In 1956, Joseph Wresinski, a Catholic priest, became the chaplain to 250 homeless families living in an emergency housing camp near Paris. The misery and squalor that Wresinski found there reminded him of the poverty he had endured as a child. "The families I met there," he would recall, "made me think of the poverty of my mother. The children could have been my brothers, my sister, or me, forty years earlier." Determined to end the poverty of these families, Wresinski launched a community development project with them. He later said, "The families in the camp inspired everything I undertook."

Other men and women from different backgrounds and beliefs came to work with Wresinski, and the project grew into the Fourth World Movement. Those who came to help formed a new type of non-denominational volunteer corps. They lived within the community they served and made a full-time, long-term commitment.

From the outset, the Movement’s work has been based on three priorities: learning from the most disadvantaged families, understanding how they become trapped in persistent poverty, and planning and developing projects with them. Joseph Wresinski created the name "Fourth World" to honor the dignity of these families and their refusal to submit to poverty.

Fourth World workers started programs with poor families in other European countries and, in 1964, came to the United States. In 1979, volunteers went to Guatemala to start the first Fourth World project in a developing country. Fourth World teams now work in about 25 countries on five continents.

On October 17, 1987, some months before he died, Joseph Wresinski dedicated a commemorative stone on the Human Rights Plaza in Paris, near the Eiffel Tower.

In 1992, the United Nations recognized October 17 as the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty. In 1996, a replica of the stone was laid in the gardens of the United Nations in New York City.