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The Six Important Words
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The ability,
power
or strength of a community or an organization.
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difference between capacity development and capacity building lies with
the conception of where the force of growth originates. |
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The
term "capacity building" implies that some agency outside the community
or organisation supplies the energy to increase its capacity. |
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is informed by the concept of "social
engineering." |
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The
term "capacity development," in contrast, implies that the energy for growth
is internal to the community or organisation. |
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(Deutsch: Leistungsaufbau,
Español:
desarrollo
de la capacidad, Filipino/Tagalog: , Français: bâtiment
de capacité, développement
de capacité, fortifier
de la communauté, हिन्दी (Hindi): षमता विकास,
Português:
desenvolvimento de capacidade, Romãnã: ,
Somali: Awoodsiinta,).
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empowerment of a community (or organization) is an increase in its strength,
improvement in its
capacity (ability)
to accomplish its goals. |
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Like
capacity development, it is a process of becoming stronger. See "Measuring
Empowerment" for a list of the sixteen elements of power or capacity,
and a participatory method of measuring its increase. |
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empowerment methodology, in contrast to the charity
approach, aims at strengthening the community rather than encouraging it
to remain dependant upon outside resources. |
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The
empowerment methodology, therefore, does not make everything easy for the
community, because it sees that struggle and resistance, as in physical
exercise, produce more strength. See Community
Empowerment. |
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See
Jihad
for an interesting metaphor.
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| The
training material here is aimed at attacking poverty at the community level,
where mobilisation and management training are aimed at empowering low
income communities. The theory behind the skills and techniques here
is sociological. |
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The
successful community worker, an applied sociologist, can not do the best
job, however, unless she or he is familiar with some of the basic principles
that lie behind the offering of skills or describing the programmes to
be set up. |
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It
is built up of several important principles:
1. While assistance can be offered, it
should not be charity assistance which promotes dependency and weakness,
but partnership, assistance and training that promotes self reliance and
increased capacity;
2. Recipient organisations or communities
should not be controlled or forced into change, but professionals trained
as activists of mobilisers should intervene with stimulation, information
and guidance;
3. Organisms become stronger by exercising,
struggling, and facing adversity. Empowerment methodology incorporates
this principle for social organisations;
4. Hands on participation, especially
in decision making, by the recipients, is essential for their increase
in capacity;
5. We need to aim at the participants
from the beginning taking full control, exercising full decision making,
and accepting full responsibility for the actions which will lead to their
increased strength.
This is the core set of principles of
the empowerment methodology. |
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word "sustainability" is important in development assistance. (The word
is not found in most dictionaries). It refers to the "ability" of something
to be "sustained" (carried on) after outside support is withdrawn. For
the community that builds a water supply, the repairing, cleaning and using
the pump after it is constructed, is the desire. |
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For
an external donor, it is the continuation of the project or its outputs
after the donor withdraws. For you, the mobilizer, it is the continuation
of the community strengthening social process after you move on. For environmentalists
and ecologists, sustainabilty requires that an activity can be sustained
(eg biologically) by the physical environment, that non-renewable resources
are not used up. |
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| The
word, "democracy," comes from ancient Greek language, where "demo" means
the people (as in demography) and "cracy" means power (as in bureaucracy
or aristocracy). |
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The
word democracy, then, means power to the people. Ironically, ancient Greece
was not very democratic in that the economy was based upon the labour of
slaves. |
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are different kinds of democracy: eg representational democracy where the
people elect representatives (eg Members of Parliament) to make decisions
for them, and participatory democracy where the people are involved in
making decisions. |
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As
a mobilizer, you are urged to promote democracy, ie in the community project,
but you are not obligated to imitate the British parliamentary system.
Look for what is socially appropriate. |
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A process of
social change towards increased political decision making power for all
people.
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"partnership" is a relationship in which there is some equality between
the parties in the agreement. In the key word, "independent," above, it
was noted that we are all, to some extent, interdependent. While your work
leads to a community breaking out of dependency, it cannot become totally
independent. |
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The
realistic aim, then, is for communities to get into partnerships with municipal
or district authorities, and work towards more equal relationships. |
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| "Participation"
is used in several contexts on this web site. "Community
Participation" means that all members of a community participate in
decision making that affects the community (not merely consultation or
contribution). See PAR. See also
Civic
Engagement. |
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"Participatory
Training" means that the trainees learn by doing,
ie participating as an effective method for learning skills. Participants
do not learn as effectively when they are listening to a lecture or to
a presentation. "Participatory Management" means that
management is not left only to the managers, but is everybody's business.
"Participatory Appraisal" (PRA) means
that the affected community or organization is stimulated to participate
in assessing the situation and determining priority needs. |
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| Transparency
is a very important element of strengthening a community (see elements
of empowerment).
The word "transparent" here means the ability to see through something. |
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When
civil servants try to do things (ie make decisions, allocate resources)
in secrecy, hiding their activities from the people, they are not being
transparent. They are giving the people the "mushroom
treatment." |
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promotes mistrust, apathy, and marginalization (important factors of
poverty
and community weakness). Your job as a mobilizer is to promote transparency.
You do it by explaining what it is, and that the people have a right and
a responsibility to know what is going on (awareness raising). |
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You
also do it by ensuring that it is a key element of the community organizations
that you form or re-organize. Laws, such as the "Freedom of Information
Act," or similar laws which ensure that details of government spending
must be of public record, available to the people, are intended to promote
governmental transparency, although some officials will attempt to subvert
the spirit of such laws. |
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you hide a problem, cover it up or deny that it is there; you surely hinder
its solution. |
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If,
instead, you uncover it, admit it, and honestly examine it, you are well
on the way to solving the problem. Transparency strengthens. |
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