Our Mission and Goals

Overpopulation threatens the quality of life for people everywhere. Population Connection is the national grassroots population organization that educates young people and advocates progressive action to stabilize world population at a level that can be sustained by Earth’s resources.

Founded in 1968, Population Connection (formerly Zero Population Growth or ZPG) is the largest grassroots population organization in the United States! We have more than 40,000 members and hundreds of thousands more supporters and participating educators working together to build a more sustainable future for the planet and all its inhabitants.

Population Connection works at the intersection of demography, health and human rights, and sustainable development.

• We develop K-12 curricula and secondary education materials for teachers and professors so they can easily incorporate population studies into their classes. These materials are teacher-tested, and many of them are available at no cost!
• We lead grassroots outreach efforts to college students across the country to motivate them to take action on behalf of marginalized communities and our beleaguered planet.
• We keep our dedicated members and supporters up to date on population research, news, and trends through our quarterly magazine, regular virtual events, and newsletters (sign up here!).
• We work with newspapers and other media outlets to include population growth in their coverage of other major global challenges, with a particular focus on climate change.
• We support 19 small organizations in Latin America, Africa, and Asia that are working to increase access to public health and family planning services, remove barriers to girls’ education, and protect wildlife in biodiversity hotspots.

Our public outreach, alongside that of our dedicated members and supporters, informs Americans about the challenges population growth poses for efforts around poverty alleviation, women’s empowerment, natural resource availability, climate change mitigation and adaptation, and biodiversity preservation. And when people are informed about population challenges and take them to heart, they tend to act in ways that bring us closer to population stabilization, whether by voting in support of progressive family planning programs and funding levels, reducing their own consumption of resources, or making thoughtful choices about their own family planning.

Our Core Values

• Effective: We hold ourselves accountable to achieving and communicating clearly defined goals and metrics.
• Inclusive: We create an open, collaborative space where all stakeholders, including staff, partners, beneficiaries, and supporters are and feel respected, have a sense of belonging, and are able to achieve their potential.
• Thoughtful: We have a nuanced understanding of the connections between population, health, and the environment and carefully consider the well-being of each other, our global community, and the living planet.
• Purposeful: We passionately advocate and educate to foster a better, safer, less crowded world for future generations and for the natural world.
• Rights-based: We uphold sexual and reproductive health, rights, and justice so that people everywhere can live meaningful lives free of coercion and rooted in their own choices.