Better Future Program envisions a future in which youth are not only empowered to challenge oppressive hierarchies each day, but to create innovative and inclusive frameworks of community care and intersectional justice.
Our MIssion
Our mission is to build a better and brighter global future for marginalized youth through education, awareness, and unity. Here at Better Future Program, we recognize that all forms of oppression are intrinsically interconnected, therefore our liberation is tied as well. All power to ALL the people. But for this to be possible, youth need access to revolutionary education, to not only learn about the systems actively working against them, but the dual power, the new structures, we are already innovating, together. It's easy to feel hopeless in these trying times but with the right tools, we can build an inclusive, informed, and intersectional future like no other.
OUR guiding principles
BFP promotes the following core values as guiding principles in our behavior and decision-making:
- Youth-Centricity → As a youth-run organization, we center the voices, priorities, and well-being of marginalized youth globally in every decision we make and action we take
- Self-Liberation → All volunteers should be at the forefront of their own liberation. Allies are meant to uplift, not overstep
- Transparency → We willingly share information pertaining to all BFP-related actions and intentions, both successes and failures, so as to remain open and honest
- Accountability → We hold ourselves and one another responsible for meeting expectations set by our organization, including tasks as well as behavior, with an eye to fairness regarding capabilities and knowledge
- Horizontality → We value the decision-making abilities of our volunteers and thus, we wish to foster power alongside one another rather than over each other
- Community → We value the impact of a shared story (e.g. location, political alignment, racial identity), collaboration, and an effective support system
- Intersectionality → We recognize how various aspects of a person's social and political identities combine to create different modes of discrimination and privilege
Our core beliefs
As written by various of our volunteers, Better Future Program wholeheartedly believes in and continues to support:
. . . and all other liberatory movements of the proletariat!
- The right to organize → communities should be allowed to come together in order to generate collective power for the powerless
- Educational equity → all people deserve equitable access to educational opportunities and resources to fully excel in the academic world
- Anti-racism → people should put forth conscious and deliberate efforts to provide equitable opportunities for all racial groups on both an individual and a systemic level
- Religious liberty → the freedom of an individual or community, in public or private, to manifest religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship, and observance
- Disability justice → all people regardless of their physical or mental capabilities deserve equitable opportunities on both an individual and a systemic level (includes Mad liberation)
- Climate action → both individuals and institutions should address the causes and impacts of climate change
- Decolonization → the undoing of colonialism, that Indigenous communities are owed the fundamental right to freely choose their sovereignty and international political status (known as self-determination)
- Gender equity → all people deserve equitable access to resources and opportunities regardless of gender identity, including economic participation and decision-making, and the ability to safely question and/or challenge dominant understandings of gender identity
- Queer/LGBTQ+ liberation → that all people deserve equitable access to opportunities on an individual and systemic level regardless of sexual orientation and the ability to safely question and/or challenge dominant understandings of various sexual orientations
- Bodily autonomy → that people deserve the right to make educated, uncoerced decisions about their own bodies
- Fat liberation → that fat people deserve equitable healthcare, all-encompassing accessibility, and respect, free from systemic oppression due to body shape, size, and/or appearance (includes the promotion of body neutrality and the dismantlement of healthism)
- Abolition → that systems like policing and incarceration are inherently flawed, cannot be reformed, and therefore must be replaced with alternatives that focus on the root causes of interpersonal violence through community support and victim/survivor-centered tactics
- Caste abolition → to eliminate all manifestations of caste apartheid by addressing the historical and ongoing injustices experienced by the communities it marginalizes
- Anti-authoritarianism → people deserve personal freedoms rather than be forced to submit to coercive hierarchies
- Anti-capitalism → the working class are deliberately exploited by the wealthy and this economic system must be changed; that the means of production should be owned and democratically controlled by the workers and/or community
. . . and all other liberatory movements of the proletariat!
OUR History
Better Future Program started as just a mere idea in 2016 when a Lake Forest Charter Elementary student was pondering ways to create healthy food accessibility in the Ninth Ward of New Orleans, Louisiana. The student, known professionally as Reagan A. Peters-Roussell or simply Reaux (she/they), realized that there was more to this world than just providing students with healthy recipes. She researched day and night only to discover concepts such as redlining and how racism could even affect what food was available to their area. Using these discoveries as fuel to change the world, Reaux decided to start Better Future Program to educate others on those same ideas they had learned about. They immediately created an email and website the same day with the help of her father, Norman D. Roussell, a local business consultant and author.
Soon after, Reaux began recruiting fellow 7th graders into her organization, which originally began as a blog on this very website, as well as online friends from Indonesia, Ireland, and the United Kingdom. Offering opinions, homework advice, and amateur articles on current news, each contributor was assigned a different day to post. Students were invigorated with the chance to finally share their thoughts with the world in a respected space, soon hosting contests and workshops to provide the same opportunities to others across the world. After successfully partnering with the late Robert Bell (he/him), then vice principal of Lake Forest Charter, to supply over 700 free reading glasses to homeless shelters in New Orleans and Houston, the organization's energy unfortunately began to die down. Students became more focused on school and other extracurriculars, understandably so, until eventually, Reaux was left to uphold BFP's mission entirely by herself from 2017 until September 2021.
It was during Hurricane Ida that Reaux realized they were already becoming an epicenter themselves to provide information on the nearest shelters, cooling and charging stations, and even directing firefighters to the homes of the elderly to save them from impending heat stroke. Up until her family's evacuation to Selma, Alabama, Reaux made her way up the levee, holding her phone to the sky each day, hoping for just a sliver of connection, living off of little to no food with no electricity or water. By the time the Peters-Roussell family had made it to Selma, Reaux knew they had to do something for their peers still in New Orleans, but what? It was time to restart Better Future Program!
She got to work immediately, creating a slideshow of job descriptions, meticulously plotting out what roles would be necessary to ensure an effective run of the organization's duties. And then? People began to apply. BFP’s Discord server was created soon after and immediately, the new volunteers got to work, designing educational workshops and mutual aid networks, as well as befriending organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union and Real Name Campaign, for roughly 2 years until the spring of 2023.
The youth volunteers of BFP had an honest conversation during their weekly Zoom meeting on March 26, 2023. While many students had applied as registered volunteers, over 70 in fact, the lack of a clear onboarding process was losing new volunteers as quickly as they came. At the suggestion of our Fat Liberation Advocate, Indie (they/them), this marked the start of the Activity & Retention Task Force, a new cross-committee team dedicated to nurturing the family BFP had built thus far, reinforcing BFP’s internal procedures and policies, and critically analyzing the organization’s successes and failures.
Now, we’re rebuilding Better Future Program back up from its very foundations and we’re hopeful as to what we can accomplish!
Soon after, Reaux began recruiting fellow 7th graders into her organization, which originally began as a blog on this very website, as well as online friends from Indonesia, Ireland, and the United Kingdom. Offering opinions, homework advice, and amateur articles on current news, each contributor was assigned a different day to post. Students were invigorated with the chance to finally share their thoughts with the world in a respected space, soon hosting contests and workshops to provide the same opportunities to others across the world. After successfully partnering with the late Robert Bell (he/him), then vice principal of Lake Forest Charter, to supply over 700 free reading glasses to homeless shelters in New Orleans and Houston, the organization's energy unfortunately began to die down. Students became more focused on school and other extracurriculars, understandably so, until eventually, Reaux was left to uphold BFP's mission entirely by herself from 2017 until September 2021.
It was during Hurricane Ida that Reaux realized they were already becoming an epicenter themselves to provide information on the nearest shelters, cooling and charging stations, and even directing firefighters to the homes of the elderly to save them from impending heat stroke. Up until her family's evacuation to Selma, Alabama, Reaux made her way up the levee, holding her phone to the sky each day, hoping for just a sliver of connection, living off of little to no food with no electricity or water. By the time the Peters-Roussell family had made it to Selma, Reaux knew they had to do something for their peers still in New Orleans, but what? It was time to restart Better Future Program!
She got to work immediately, creating a slideshow of job descriptions, meticulously plotting out what roles would be necessary to ensure an effective run of the organization's duties. And then? People began to apply. BFP’s Discord server was created soon after and immediately, the new volunteers got to work, designing educational workshops and mutual aid networks, as well as befriending organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union and Real Name Campaign, for roughly 2 years until the spring of 2023.
The youth volunteers of BFP had an honest conversation during their weekly Zoom meeting on March 26, 2023. While many students had applied as registered volunteers, over 70 in fact, the lack of a clear onboarding process was losing new volunteers as quickly as they came. At the suggestion of our Fat Liberation Advocate, Indie (they/them), this marked the start of the Activity & Retention Task Force, a new cross-committee team dedicated to nurturing the family BFP had built thus far, reinforcing BFP’s internal procedures and policies, and critically analyzing the organization’s successes and failures.
Now, we’re rebuilding Better Future Program back up from its very foundations and we’re hopeful as to what we can accomplish!
OUR STRUCTURE
Also known as “flat organizational structure,” all BFP volunteers are placed on an equal standing in order to uplift all perspectives and further promote autonomy, fluidity between responsibilities, efficient lines of communication, optimization of all resources within the organization, and thinking outside of the box.
Taking notes from "anti-authoritarianism," the ideal that individuals deserve personal freedoms rather than be forced to submit to coercive hierarchies, and democratic confederalism, BFP reinforces its horizontal organizational structure through the usage of “committees.” Each committee (Administrative Staff, Advocacy Committee, Resources Committee, and General Volunteers) forms its own interdependent goals and initiatives to fulfill which are then presented to the entire group during weekly meetings. Due to BFP’s ever-growing size, committees allow every single volunteer to have a voice in policymaking, event coordination, and project management before such plans reach the larger stage for critique, compromise, and voting. And this is where consensus-based decision making comes into play, which tends to negate the tyranny of the majority by ensuring every concern is acknowledged before moving forward!
Got any workshop ideas? Let us know and we can work together to bring your dream to fruition!
Taking notes from "anti-authoritarianism," the ideal that individuals deserve personal freedoms rather than be forced to submit to coercive hierarchies, and democratic confederalism, BFP reinforces its horizontal organizational structure through the usage of “committees.” Each committee (Administrative Staff, Advocacy Committee, Resources Committee, and General Volunteers) forms its own interdependent goals and initiatives to fulfill which are then presented to the entire group during weekly meetings. Due to BFP’s ever-growing size, committees allow every single volunteer to have a voice in policymaking, event coordination, and project management before such plans reach the larger stage for critique, compromise, and voting. And this is where consensus-based decision making comes into play, which tends to negate the tyranny of the majority by ensuring every concern is acknowledged before moving forward!
Got any workshop ideas? Let us know and we can work together to bring your dream to fruition!