Nominee for Socially Responsible Organization of the Year: ATD-QUART-MONDE, Bruno Dabout (GE 1982), Délégué régional Amérique du Nord chez Mouvement international ATD Quart Monde

ATD Quart Monde is an international movement without political or religious affiliations. The movement was created in association with persons in situations of serious poverty and develops projects geared to eliminating misery by ensuring access to fundamental rights. Initiatives are focused particularly on facilitating access to knowledge and culture and on giving a voice to people (street libraries, arts and knowledge festivals, people’s universities, etc.). It also runs a publishing and research activity with people in situations of exclusion. The movement strives at local, national and international levels to ensure the most deprived are heard and represented, and that the fight against serious poverty is considered a priority (actions targeting political and professional institutions and the general public). ATD Quart Monde’s objective of working together to help those suffering from severe poverty implies it gets as close as possible to the people it is trying to help. This means that permanent volunteers live in the neighbourhoods where they work. “Our people frequently live in highly-disadvantaged neighbourhoods. The experience is highly challenging, but always a passionate one, both lived from the standpoint of a parent and a member of society". The school of life!

How has Bruno contributed to ATD Quart-Monde’s development? 

After graduating from Edhec in 1982, Bruno Dabout joined ATD Quart Monde as a permanent volunteer in 1985. His different assignments have led him to live with his wife and two children in Paris, in the Paris suburbs, in Bangkok and, for a period of three years, in Jersey City opposite New York City, then New Orleans and the suburbs of Washington DC. 
Bruno has worked alternately on designing and leading projects designed to fight poverty, and on fund-raising and managing the association’s finances, and sometimes performed both functions at the same time.  
Few of the people he has encountered in the association have graduated from a business school and his training has been extremely useful. In particular, he held overall responsibility for all financial and managerial matters for the whole of the ATD Quart Monde movement for a period of 10 years. His responsibilities embraced 35 countries, an overall budget of €15m and tens of thousands of volunteers. In 2007, following an audit by France’s public accounts body, the Cour des Comptes, the  body’s erstwhile president, Philippe Seguin (now deceased), acknowledged 10 years of efforts that enabled the association to progress from “honesty to honesty plus financial transparency and an accounting and administrative organisation that seeks to operate with the same stringency as a commercial company”.
Following this recognition, Bruno accepted a posting as Regional Officer for North America. The assignment has required him to support and assist ATD Quart Monde’s teams and groups in North America, to the extent that he now has worldwide responsibility for applying one of the three ongoing priorities that guide ATD Quart Monde’s projects and activities worldwide, namely to promote an economy that respects both people and the planet.    
http://www.atd-quartmonde.org/ 
http://www.atd-quartmonde.fr/