In view of the many factors threatening the survival, health, and cognitive development of the world's disadvantaged children, both in the United States and in developing countries, the Ford Foundation has begun a new program, called Child Survival/Fair Start, to improve these children's chances. In this working paper, Fair Start's overall strategy of promoting preventive self-care and of experimenting with low-cost outreach techniques that provide basic knowledge about health, nutrition, and child care to poor households is discussed. Five community-based projects in the United States are briefly described, as are special programs on breastfeeding, and evaluation, policy analysis, dissemination, and advocacy efforts. Fair Start projects in Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, the Middle East, Nigeria, Cuba, Peru, and Brazil are also summarized. The U.S. projects are directed at high risk disadvantaged mothers and emphasize the use of a network of community helpers in the "peer-to-peer" outreach model. For the developing countries, the Fair Start strategy has three elements: (1) support for community initiatives that draw on local skills, and experiments with ways to make effective use of local resources; (2) support for the development and dissemination of information on simple, practical, and relevant preventive therapeutic measures; and (3) research to identify the causes of high levels of childhood morbidity and mortality and inadequate mental development among disadvantaged groups. (CMG)