At Capita, we have an ambitious global mission: to help families and communities flourish in a just, peaceful, prosperous society on a healthier, cleaner, and safer planet. We explore the major transformations of our era—social, demographic, cultural, technological, environmental, and economic—and uncover their impacts on families and communities worldwide. How should we respond to the health impacts of climate disruption, for instance, or the effects of loneliness and social disconnection? What conditions and systems are needed to ensure that widespread human flourishing is possible?
- What do we mean by human flourishing? A life of flourishing allows individuals and communities to imagine and become what they wish to be with passion, purpose, and excellence.
- Flourishing is the realization of human dignity. We believe that all people possess inherent and equal dignity.
- Flourishing starts in the earliest years of life. We recognize that the foundations of human flourishing are laid in the developmentally critical first eight years of a child’s life, which is why the early years are central to our work. But flourishing encompasses the entire lifespan, and this is reflected in our work. Since human beings are relational, healthy human development towards flourishing happens in the context of “engaged interplay” between children and their caregivers and between families and the other communities to which they belong.
We promote flourishing because we believe that human dignity isn’t realized merely in procedural, rights-based minimalism (for example, a narrow guarantee of freedom from manipulation). It is the active pursuit of projects of excellence, purpose, and meaning; a life of love given and received; a vocation and not just a career; interdependence, not only independence; restorative leisure; the performance of duties; the embrace of responsibility, and the growing capacity for joy, wonder, and awe.
We see the human person as an active protagonist in history, not mere commodities or machines serving the bottom line. Public policies, civic projects, social conditions, and, indeed, our cities, communities, and nations should be shaped to enable every child and family to flourish.
At Capita, we aim to remove barriers to flourishing and use public policymaking to promote social and cultural flourishing conditions for all.
This focus rests on several core beliefs:
- Policy, not just programs. To address the well-being of families, many governments in the last half-century have established discrete programs that address only a certain aspect of people’s lives (for example, home visiting programs support families with low incomes), but cannot address the root barriers to flourishing. They merely ameliorate symptoms. For more, read here. We understand the need for a broad approach focused on policy rather than programs—the only way to address systemic barriers to flourishing.
- The good of every person and the whole person. The human person is complex, yet we simplify what children need to flourish to the lowest common denominator. This is particularly the case for children facing precarity or those from marginalized groups. Wealthier children get access to the arts or other cultural assets—essential for a full, flourishing life—but low-income children are assumed to need only math, science, and discipline. They’re reduced to their economic needs. Our whole-person approach demands that we work towards policies and investments in children that reflect their full complexity as people. Our agendas promote the good of each person and the whole person: their economic, cultural, spiritual, and social good, their health and well-being, and their education.
A cross-disciplinary approach. To promote the flourishing of people in all their complexity, public policies, programs, and related tools must lean heavily on cross-disciplinary approaches in their design and implementation. They cannot be limited to only one discipline or a single way of knowing. Still, they must embrace various approaches, from psychology, history, arts, and culture to economics, philosophy, and medicine.