How did we end up in a world with massive wealth in the hands of a few and ecosystems crashing as our climates degrade? The answer is surprising. Rather than invest in early childhood development, at the crucial phase in the middle of the Twentieth Century, world leaders chose population growth and the creation of mass consumers, cheap labor and large bases of taxpayers.
The Fair Fair Start Movement and Christine Dimmick’s Be the Change are pushing back. Listen to the podcast.
WHY FAIR START?
Governments are failing children’s right to an eco social fair start in life.
We know that early childhood experience is pivotal to lifetime outcomes. Why are we waiting for adverse childhood experiences to occur before acting?
Children deserve equitable conditions, right from the beginning. A fair start in life is the first human right – it overrides all others. It is what children are entitled to under the Children’s Rights Convention, and what allows them to eventually be free from the power of others, and truly self-determining.
Because legitimate governance derives from people, who derive from the norms that create them, there are no such things as just societies, political legitimacy and freedom without the sort of Fair Start reforms discussed in this site. Without them we are always coming from an unjust place.
How do we change course? Many are joining this simple discourse, in which we recognize that all wealth is subject to future generations’ right to fairness, and that wealth transfers should act as an incentive and entitlement for better – and equitable – family planning. Ensuring an eco-social #fairstart in life for all kids can have ten to twenty times the long run impact on the key social and ecological crises we are facing today relative to other interventions.
It is the most effective and just thing we can do. We may achieve it by extraordinary means, because there is no justice without it.