Essay On Empowerment

Empowerment is a word that is often used but rarely operationalized. Non-governmental development organizations (NGDO) aim to “empower” the communities they serve, yet at times lack consensus about how to make individuals and communities feel more empowered. The purpose of this essay is to define empowerment within the realm of NGDOs. Cultural variability in definitions of empowerment abounds; this essay considers how cultural variability complicates the operationalization of empowerment. In addition, this essay will consider how to make empowerment of communities within the context of NGDOs more measureable. Further implications for practice within NGDOs will be considered. Empowerment refers to efforts to transform personal, interpersonal,

Every person has a unique sense of and right to power; power is not simply dispensed from the NGDO to the community, as power is something that individuals and communities already have (Kilby, 2006). Every community has strengths and resources that can be called upon in times of need (Fowler, 2013). Every community has the capacity to organize, design, and implement solutions to their own problems within their own communities (Joshi & Moore, 2000). To be certain, communities may be accustomed to relinquishing that power to outside organizations and groups; it may have lost its feelings of power because it is so accustomed to not being heard. Good NGDO leadership, however, actively solicits the participation of the community. It aims to make the voices of the community

While there are objective measures of empowerment such as the Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM), which attempts to capture women’s ability to engage political decision-making, to achieve professional advancement, and to earn on a level comparable to men (Charmes & Wieringa, 2003). GEM also looks at other quantifiable factors, such as the number of seats in government, number of managerial positions occupied by women, and annual income (Charmes & Wieringa, 2003). These sorts of measures could be easily adapted to NGDOs. For example, NGDOs concerned with whether they are operating within an empowerment framework should look to the organizational makeup to assess how they are using local constituents to meet the organization’s mission. NGDOs that claim to “empower” its communities yet have few local constituents or service users on the board of directors or staff should further revisit their organizational chart to examine whether empowerment is being operationalized on a day-to-day