Establishing a guiding principle for the project

If you wish to entice others into joining a project or organization, you will likely want to establish a clear goal, mission statement, or set of principles to guide your group’s actions. This way people will know exactly what they are joining or supporting. These guidelines can always be modified later by mutual agreement and according to a process that suits the group. If an overall theme is diversity or social justice, a guiding principle might be to promote the belief that people should be judged based on their own merits, rather than on characteristics like age, gender, religion, “race,” ethnic background, physical appearance, sexual orientation, or other factors unrelated to the quality of their character.

In the case of Red Deer’s STOP Program, we stated in our brochure and other literature that we stressed education over confrontation, but were not afraid of challenging racism, sexism, homophobia, and other various forms of narrow-mindedness and discrimination that exist.

Addressing systemic inequities and other hidden barriers to fairness can also be stated explicitly in a statement of principles or goals. A solid basis for this principle can be found in the first article of the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
“All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.”