Better Future Program envisions a future in which youth are not only empowered to challenge oppressive hierarchies each day, but to create new, 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 Social contract
By joining BFP, all of our volunteers have agreed to abide by and uphold the following regulations:
Based on the principles presented by Interrupting Criminalization, Project NIA, and Critical Resistance, all of our project managers, as well, must consider the following questions in preparation of every workshop:
- Be respectful of all global communities and cultural practices, so long as these practices respect the livelihoods of others.
- Be respectful of the capabilities of our peers. If a task cannot be completed to its fullest potential, find a collective solution rather than placing the onus on the individual to solve it on their own.
- Be respectful of all types and levels of knowledge. We can always learn more from one another than apart.
- In the event a volunteer is harmed in any way, shift focus towards the healing of both the victim and the perpetrator rather than incrimination. We aim to inhibit systems of abuse, not perpetuate them further.
- Center both physical and mental health as we liberate and educate. Self-care is revolutionary self-preservation.
- All volunteers should be at the forefront of their own liberation. Allies are meant to uplift, not to overstep.
Based on the principles presented by Interrupting Criminalization, Project NIA, and Critical Resistance, all of our project managers, as well, must consider the following questions in preparation of every workshop:
- Does our workshop/project legitimize, promote, or expand any oppressive system that we actually aim to dismantle?
- Do the effects our workshop creates already exist in a way we have to organize against?
- Is this workshop something that we, or others, will be organizing to undo in five years because it is used to cage or dehumanize people?
- Does our workshop preserve existing power relations?
- Does our workshop create concrete, material change in the lives of the people we wish to help?
- Does our workshop create a division between “deserving” and “undeserving” people?
- Does our workshop leave out especially marginalized groups (people with criminal records, undocumented people, etc.)?
- Does it cherry-pick particular people or groups as token public faces?
- Who is working on this initiative? Who is not? Why us? Why now?
- Are those most affected at the forefront of our workshop, leading this initiative?
- Does our workshop effectively mobilize those within the community we aim to help?
- Is our workshop peer-led and -initiated?
- Is our workshop accessible? This can include those of varying physical/mental capabilities, on various platforms (social media, in-person, etc.), of various financial abilities, and/or in various languages (including but not limited to sign languages as well as braille), if possible
- Does our workshop affirm that power is within our communities rather than displacing our power in the government or profit-driven corporations?
- Are we, as project managers, willing to reassess and improve the language/tactics used in our workshop, if need be, to better protect and serve the communities we wish to help?
our CORE BELIEFS
As written by various of our volunteers, Better Future Program wholeheartedly believes in and continues to support:
- The right to organize, that communities should be allowed to come together in order to generate collective power for the powerless
- Intersectionality, using an analytical framework to recognize how various aspects of a person's social and political identities combine to create different modes of discrimination and privilege
- Educational equity, that all people deserve equitable access to educational opportunities, resources, and even teaching styles to fully excel in the academic world
- Anti-racism, that individuals 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, that all individuals regardless of their physical or mental capabilities deserve equitable opportunities on both an individual and a systemic level (includes mad studies)
- Climate action, that 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, that all people deserve equitable ease of 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 individuals 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 individuals 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, that individuals deserve personal freedoms rather than be forced to submit to coercive hierarchies
- Anti-capitalism, that working class individuals 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
OUR structure
Better Future Program (BFP) utilizes a horizontal organizational structure, placing its registered youth volunteers, ages 14-25, into one of four committees: Administrative Staff, Advocacy Committee, Resources Committee, and the General Volunteers. Through these committees, youth volunteers organize and manage their very own workshops and mutual aid networks to educate and empower their local communities! These initiatives may look like starting a mutual aid fund at a local high school, providing free revolutionary movie screenings, designing educational zines to place in Little Free Libraries, speaking at elementary and middle schools on marginalized histories, designing effective protest and petition strategies, connecting youth activists with professors, experts, and veterans in their respective fields, and so much more.
Got any future workshop ideas? Let us know, and we can help bring your idea to fruition!
Got any future workshop ideas? Let us know, and we can help bring your idea to fruition!
Our history
Better Future Program started as just a mere idea in 2016 when a student from Lake Forest Charter Elementary was pondering ways in which 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, 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 organization's duties. And then? People began to apply.
Now here we are today with dozens of registered volunteers, various social justice workshops, and thousands of free educational materials!
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, 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 organization's duties. And then? People began to apply.
Now here we are today with dozens of registered volunteers, various social justice workshops, and thousands of free educational materials!