| Population Strategies Group |
Mission Statement
To stimulate coordinated policy development and action initiatives among population, health, environmental, economic, scientific, religious and cultural groups on issues that will lead to population sustainability.
Primary Goals
To support participating groups in establishing a consortium for identifying and implementing effective population policies
To support the consortium in building and linking separate grassroots systems for unified action
To establish a joint media campaign that focuses on population issues
To work with the consortium to create a biennial conference in Washington, DC.
Approaches
To support policies based upon factual information and economic analysis on the determinants and consequences of population size, consumption, distribution, and change
To transform the debate on population issues into greater support for family planning, reproductive health, women's rights, and parental responsibility
To reduce the discrepancy in both population growth and consumption between the more-developed and less-developed countries
To reduce the pressures of human populations on the environment
- To support sustainable economic growth
PSG brings to the table expertise in coalition building, issue identification, and lobbying combined with skills in using computerized information systems to support fundraising, political activation, and policy change.
PSG Advisory Board:
PSG is currently establishing an advisory board, consisting of leaders of population, environment, business, health, and other groups.
PSG Staff:
Sheila B. Macdonald
Sheila Macdonald has specialized in federal and state advocacy in Washington, D.C., for the past three decades representing two major food and agricultural trade associations, a tax and budget policy group and a health professionals organization. She spent two years as a legislative assistant to a U.S. senator on Capitol Hill. Her knowledge of how government works from inside and out has enabled her to lead large and small coalitions to obtain legislative and regulatory victories. In this role she has specialized in bringing diverse and far flung interests together to identify shared goals and establishing mechanisms for linking grassroots systems for joint action. During these years she became increasingly concerned about the inability of the government to address difficult and contentious issues or to take action to protect future generations. Sheila was raised in an Oregon family involved in wilderness recreation and conservation. She is a graduate of Stanford University with a BA in Political Science. She is an accomplished speaker and has a long list of published policy articles on health, tax and budget issues to her credit. .
John S. Williams
John S. Williams, a demographer (Ph.D., Princeton), has expertise in the evaluation of the use of data information systems to inform policy analysis and program evaluation; he has specialized in program development concerning population and the environment. He served as director of evaluation at the Population Reference Bureau for MEASURE Communications, an international program seeking to use information for the development of better programs in population and reproductive health. He has undertaken research at the community level looking at the relationships between population and environment in 12 countries, and has trained environmentalists in Africa, South Asia, and Oceania in working with communities in the management of environmental resources. During the 1990's, he was the Population-Environment officer at IUCN, the World Conservation Union, in Switzerland, supported by US AID's Population Fellows Program. He has served on the faculty of the City University of New York, the Graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research, and the University of Michigan, and on the staff of the Population Reference Bureau and IUCN, the World Conservation Union.
Contact Information
Population
Strategies Group
8604 2nd Avenue Suite 200
Silver Spring, MD 20910
(301)
589-9455 (voice)
johnswms@jwcomputersystems.net
psgmacdonald@rcn.com