In development
No Perfect Words
A campaign with one job: to put a single sentence into an adult's head so that it is there years later, on the day it matters.
The manifesto
We ask children to protect themselves with language they do not have.
We teach them the words no, stop and tell a grown-up, and then we hand them a situation with no name in it, arranged by someone who has already explained that there is nothing to tell. And when the child does try — sideways, partly, in the wrong words, at the wrong moment — we ask them to say it better.
Then we decide, on the strength of a four-year-old's phrasing, whether anything happened.
There are no perfect words. There never were. The adult is the one with the vocabulary, the power and the choice.
No child should have to tell it perfectly to be protected.
The campaign unit
Every asset in this campaign has the same four parts, in the same order. The discipline of the format is the point: an ordinary sentence, the recall line, one instruction, and the disclaimer that stops the whole thing turning into a symptom checklist.
1 — the sentence
“I don’t like his game.”
2 — the recall line
Children tell with the words they have.
3 — the instruction
Listen. Don’t interrogate. Protect.
4 — the limit
No phrase proves abuse. Hypothetical example.
The First Tell Project · firsttellproject.com
Campaign rules
These are binding on us and on any partner running the campaign.
You can say
- Hypothetical, composite child language only
- Plain typography; the sentence carries the weight
- The disclaimer appears on every asset, without exception
- One instruction per asset
- Always route to a real service, not just to us
Avoid saying
- No photographs or illustrations of children
- No quotations from a real child, ever
- No crying children, broken dolls, shadows, hands or silhouettes
- No statistics used as shock
- No implication that a phrase is diagnostic
- No naming of any individual
The words shown here are hypothetical composites written for teaching. They are not quotations from a real child, and none of them is evidence of anything.
Partner toolkit
The toolkit is being assembled alongside the campaign's expert review. When it is ready it will include print-ready panels at poster and social sizes, an editable sentence bank reviewed by specialists, French versions, alt-text for every asset, a one-page usage licence, and a short guide for the person who has to answer questions after the posters go up.
That last item is the reason we are not releasing the kit yet. Putting this campaign into a school without preparing the staff for the disclosures that may follow would be irresponsible.