Our Mission and Values

Our Mission

The mission of the Freedom & Virtue Institute is to promote individual liberty, self-reliance, and human dignity. We believe in fostering attitudes and leading initiatives that create self-reliance among at-risk, underprivileged children and individuals enduring hardship who wish to better their situations and live a life of dignity and integrity. The Freedom & Virtue Institute conducts three unique programs: Self-Reliance Clubs, Effective Compassion Training, and Commonality Training.

Promoting self-sufficiency through entrepreneurship, a strong work ethic, financial literacy education, and banking education allows children at risk and lower income families to find a way out of dependency on government assistance and to create a better economic future. The Freedom & Virtue Institute partners with Title 1 schools, the business community, the faith and nonprofit sector, and all men and women of good will to strive together toward communities where:

1. People in need are supported and respected as having the capacity to become active participants in the building of better lives for themselves and their community.
2. The virtues of civic engagement, compassion, and generosity are aligned with a strong work ethic and entrepreneurship as the best instruments for a better economic future.
3. The skills and knowledge of how to engage in a market economy are communicated in simple and practical ways to help at-risk children and low-income families become protagonists of their own development instead of remaining passive recipients of charity or welfare.
4. Government assistance and the welfare state do not take center stage in the process of building better lives but remain secondary and temporary resources for authentic crisis situations of need.
5. The process of wealth creation through economic activity is supported by simple but effective education on finances, banking, and the workings of the free market economy.

Our Values

• Individual Freedom. As the famous historian Lord Acton stated, liberty is not the power of doing what we like but the right of being able to do what we ought. Individual liberty is the liberty of those persons who are free from external restraint in the exercise of those rights which enable people to fulfill their duties in life. People are free when, moved by an internal conviction of what is good, they use their autonomy to recreate their environment for the good.
• Human Dignity. Human beings have certain natural capacities that come from being made in the image and likeness of God. Two important capacities are reason, helping us to discover the truth, and choice, so that we can do what is good. FVI undertakes initiatives that value and enhance human dignity by promoting good character, self-worth, creativity, entrepreneurship, and well-being.
• Education. We use our reason to discover truths about our universe, our world, and our society. Education is essential to this task of discovering truth. We teach the principles of effective compassion to families, communities, volunteer organizations, and churches, and those we teach spread the message throughout their local communities and across the country.
• Initiative. Human persons with dignity are called not to be passive recipients of magnanimity but to become active builders of their own lives. The best method for lasting and positive change in communities is encouraging people to use their talents in creative ways to find solutions to their problems.
• Self-Reliance. Our most fundamental reliance is on God, who reveals the capacities of reason and choice to perfection. We rely on our capacities because we were made in his image. That is, we use the gifts he gave us to recreate our environment and produce positive outcomes for ourselves, our families, and our communities. We also rely on and cooperate with others because they are also made in the image of God—we are called to communion! FVI seeks to replace the attitudes of entitlement and dependency by teaching individuals that they must become accountable for their own lives and well-being.

Our Guiding Principles

The Freedom & Virtue Institute strives to educate on America’s founding principles of limited government and individual freedom and to uphold the values of human dignity and personal responsibility. We bring opportunities into the local community for citizens to learn, discuss, and implement our ideas. In pursuing our goals, FVI does not support or endorse any specific political party or candidates, but instead looks at the “big picture” and the role of government in our society. We believe human freedom and private initiative in local communities are the best instruments to create lasting positive change in our society.