The Declaration Initiative

TDI is a movement that inspires members of American communities to invest together in assuring access to the promises of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all by July 4th, 2026. TDI has developed a two-fold approach to its mission:

I. Eliminating destructive conditions in the US that trap children and their families in the lowest income levels (the bottom 15%) in poverty through several generations, limiting access to opportunity permanently.

II. Positioning multi-generational poverty as antithetical to the aspirations of the Declaration of Independence, intolerable for the effective practice of democracy and critical to eliminate by 2026, the nation’s celebration of the 250^th anniversary of our founding document.

TDI is a facilitating and organizing entity that serves the poorest Americans as a broker working inside and outside of their communities to leverage social as well as economic change. We see more precisely that our work is to identify hubs of community and civic leadership and encircle and enhance their work with information, effective tools, programs, and methods that in rare cases may need to be developed, but more likely, already exist. These tools, programs, and methods have often not been available for the multi-faceted work of ending poverty at the site level.