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Vision, Mission and Theory of Change

Our Vision

We envision a world of smaller and truly democratic communities surrounded by nature. They are constituted of free and equal people, each person has a meaningful role in making the rules under which they live, and each was empowered by the conditions in which they were born and raised.

That is what true freedom and legitimate governance  – for all – looks like. That vision reflects our most fundamental and objective values: Wellbeing, Equity, Nature, Democracy, and Improving Continuity. That vision can only be achieved by changing the way we plan families, and by constituting future generations around a Fair Start first principle, or grundnorm, of relative self-determination. We may liberate those in this vision, the free entities of the future, from the tyranny of prior generations by all means effective. 

Our Mission

The Problem: Family planning in the world today is based upon a parent-centered and isolationist  model that hurts children, families, communities, and our environment. That model prevents the realization of freedom and is the fundamental source of our social and ecological crises. That model is the product of governments and businesses that profit from population growth, want to avoid collective obligations that require investing in rather than exploiting future generations, and who helped eliminate the responsibilities inherent in having kids as a means of accelerating growth.

The Solution: Fair Start Movement acts as a watchdog to ensure fundamental justice, and a “part replacer,” replacing the incoherent parent-centered model with the truly human rights-based and child-centered Fair Start model. The parent-centered model is inherently misleading and enabled the climate and other crises we face today.  Replacing it will also create space for the development of even better models.

True public interest work begins with this change – creating a just normative foundation that accounts for actual relations between people, and between people and their environment. Work done without this change never starts from a just place and never actually accounts for power relations because it never accounts for their creation. 

Groups that claim to be doing public interest work should assess whether they are actually promoting justice with this simple inversion test. 

How do we ensure a fair start in life for every child? The science is clear: Equitable family entitlements that encourage delayed parenthood work. Fair Start family reforms are the most just and effective way to protect children, animals and the environment. Join our Tell the Truth campaign urging corporations and charities to disclose their family policies, past and present, and the impact of those policies on things like inequity and the climate crisis. 

Why is Fair Start the most just and effective solution to the crises we face? Without these reforms none of our efforts can come from a just place. Fair societies are comprised of people who were created fairly. 

Future children should be the focus of family planning laws and policies because they have the most at stake. That change is the key to freedom – the freedom to a say in the rules under which one lives, to equal opportunities in life, and the freedom from others that is nature. That is what a decolonized future looks like. This is not merely theoretical, but the basis for concrete action we can take today at multiple levels of social change – legal, institutional, cultural, discursive, etc.

The Fair Start model is the best construction of the moral and legal right to have children.

Here are examples of how Fair Start Movement is replacing the old and isolationist model with the Fair Start model.

Fair Start Movement is more a praxis of truly human rights-based family planning – often operating as a leaderless resistance model – than an entity/organization. Our tactics revolve around 1) using our model to force powerful entities to tell the truth about fundamental injustice, 2) encouraging others to take part in and peaceful and lawful action around this discourse, and 3) publicizing those actions. 

We invite you to join the transition to better family planning by taking actions to ensure kids a fair start in life, and speaking out about what you’ve done. The human brain is predisposed to focus on the immediate  over the important. Working for social change without family planning reform is the worst case of this tendency, but together we can change direction. 

Fair Start Movement is not just another voice in the crowd. Instead, we make sure all voices matter by changing the nature of the crowd. 

Our Theory of Change

We believe theories of change should be specific. Our theory is that the social justice community is using a flawed family planning model – the isolation model – that undercuts the shared mission of the community. We create change by using a variety of tactics. We mostly rely on financial entitlements that ensure parental delay, readiness, and smaller families. But our tactics also include truth and reconciliation via our #TellTheTruth Campaign and public role modeling via our Trolley Track campaign – to replace the isolation model with the child-first Fair Start model at cultural, institutional, and legal levels, allowing the new models to then be implemented and scaled up by the community. We oppose all forms of violence, and urge the realization of Fair Start through peaceful action only.

Collage of small families with a bright future
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