Company Profile
Population Connection
Company Overview
Population Connection is a non-profit organization that raises awareness of population challenges and advocates for improved global access to family planning and reproductive health care. Founded in 1968, it is the largest grassroots organization pursuing progressive polices to address global population growth.
Why does it matter? One in eight people is hungry. More than a billion people live in areas where water is already scarce. High fertility leads to poor health outcomes for mothers and their children. Rapidly expanding populations can keep nations mired in a cycle of poverty and contribute to social and political unrest. Biodiversity is lost when plants and animals are crowded out to make room for more development.
For over 50 years, Population Connection has been developing quality curriculum for the K-12 classroom to help students understand human population dynamics and their impact on environmental systems and quality of life issues. We also have a well-established teacher-training program, which prepares over 12,000 educators each year in innovative, hands-on workshops.
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 all of our planet’s inhabitants. Population Connection works to ensure that every woman around the world who wants to delay or end childbearing has access to the health services and contraceptive supplies she needs in order to do so.
Company History
Population Connection was founded in 1968 with the vision of working towards a sustainable balance between the Earth’s people, resources, and the environment. The three founders, led by Stanford University biologist Paul Ehrlich, adopted the demographer’s term for a stable population by selected Zero Population Growth as a name. The name, confrontational and direct, was a reflection of those turbulent times. Over the years, the organization grew and grew, now counting approximately 40,000 members. During those years, population also continued to grow, swelling from 3.5 billion to 7.5 billion. In those intervening years, the population world also came to understand the paramount importance of a rights-based approach that empowered women and families and prioritized reproductive autonomy.
There was an increasing sense within the organization that a new name would allow us to better educate and advocate for a better, safer, and less-crowded world. So in 2002, Zero Population Growth became Population Connection.
There is a clear connection between population growth and virtually every challenge facing our planet. As the leading grassroots population organization, ZPG has been the “population connection” for 50 years. By changing our name to Population Connection, our aim was to rally even more support for the kind of education and action that can and must change the world. ZPG’s early mission was relatively straightforward; raise public awareness of the link between population growth and environmental degradation and, in turn, encourage people to have smaller families.
Today, Population Connection is working to slow population growth and achieve a sustainable balance between the Earth’s people and its resources through the most effective and most just approach: advocacy for voluntary family planning and comprehensive reproductive health care We seek to empower people to make the reproductive health decisions that are best for them, to protect the environment and ensure a high quality of life for present and future generations. Population Connection’s education and advocacy programs aim to influence public policies, attitudes, and behavior on national and global population issues and related concerns.
Population Connection has a grassroots membership with a deep and abiding concern about the critical need for population stabilization. We want people everywhere to join our cause so that, together, we can make the world better, safer, and less crowded.
Benefits
Excellent benefits package including:
• Blue Cross Blue Shield PPO and POS medical coverage--$20/month individual
• Blue Dental coverage $5/month
• employer paid life and disability insurance
• 11 paid holidays
• generous annual and sick leave
• 6% 401(K) match
• ID theft protection service
Our standard work hours are 9 am to 5 pm, with a half hour lunch (37.5 hours/week).