Why Building Capabilities

Capabilities are the vehicles for creation, adaptation, growth, and building on existing abilities that cultivate a healthy, meaningful life. They are sustainable under the legal protection and paralegal promotion of innate human attributes that stay with the person for life.

The capability approach is a theoretical framework championed by philosopher Martha Nussbaum and economist Amartya Sen that asserts two claims:

“First, the claim that the freedom to achieve well-being is of primary moral importance and,

Second, that well-being should be understood in terms of people’s capabilities and functionings.”

Capabilities are the doings and beings that people can achieve if they choose, such as being well-nourished, traveling, getting married or not, being educated, and formulating and carrying out a life plan; “functionings” then, are realized capabilities.

For someone to transform a set of means – resources and public goods – into a functioning (i.e., whether one has a particular capability) depends on certain personal, sociopolitical, and environmental conditions.  

Building Capabilities goal is to be a platform for endeavors to cultivate and support actions that lead to individuals fulfilling their capacities