Dear friends,

In early April, I flew to China to join a South Africa-based friend and colleague in presenting a keynote address at the World Forum on Early Care and Education on the timeless needs impacting children and families and the global trends affecting their well-being.

The opportunity to present our thinking to 800 people from 71 countries who care deeply about building a healthy, smart, and peaceful future for our children and our planet was an inspiration. We spoke about

the timeless need to provide dignified work for parents and ensure a future of dignified work for children
the importance of accessing good, nutritious food and the threat that climate change poses to ensuring good food for all children, and
the timeless value of caregiving, which is changing as a result of AI, automation, and economic forces that press in on time spent caring for family.

This is just one example of the way in which Capita is successfully fostering new ideas and encouraging informed public dialogue-- here in the United States and around the world-- about critical issues impacting children and families.

We have also recently published a white paper to better connect the real needs of children and families with philanthropic giving, and we partnered with a large California county to shape their approach to serving children in light of transformations in work, immigration, and digital technology.

In the world of 2019, informed and thoughtful dialogue about the issues we face and the most pressing threats to the well-being of children and families is in short supply but as important as ever. Capita is leading a global conversation about

What might an expanding gig economy and changing nature of work mean for parenting, child care, and the skills necessary to flourish?
How might climate change alter the needs of families and children and what should we do about it?
What might civic responsibility look like in a rapidly changing and ever-more digital world, and how might society’s understanding of best parenting and education practices shift to develop young people in that new reality?
How might society’s understanding of gender, race, identity, and equity shift in the future and how might that affect families and children’s development?

In an age of anxiety, we are charting a course to a more hopeful future for children and their families.

Later this year we will join KnowledgeWorks in releasing the first-ever Futures for Young Children and Families forecast. This body of work promises to be catalytic in driving policymakers, philanthropic funders, teachers, journalists, and all who care deeply about our responsibility to the future to examine their assumptions and act differently to build a world in which children and families flourish.

I’d like to invite you to join our work. Beginning this month, we are launching new monthly giving platforms so that you can support this paradigm-shifting work with a small contribution each month. You can support us directly through our website or on Patreon. Your contributions will be critical to sustaining our work in the months and years ahead.

Please carefully consider a $5, $10, or $15 per month contribution to drive this work.

And, as a thank you for your support, we will send our first 20 subscribers a beautiful deck of cards in a letterpress box meant to nurture critical moments of imagination. The thought and writing prompts on these cards are provided by esteemed artists of all disciplines who have completed residencies with our close collaborators AIR Serenbe. The cards, created with support from our friends at Openfields, were designed by the South Carolina-based creative agency Fuzzco.

In hope,

Joe

Hope in an age of anxiety: A Midyear Update from our CEO