The Essence of Empowering People

Empowering people is a key to people development. Unless they are powered-up to make a difference in their lives people cannot move forward. And the best way to empower people is to educate them. To educate is not about according formal education. It is basically to provide them with appropriate knowledge and relevant opportunities to hone their capabilities.

Education of any form can be empowering only if geared towards actual interests and needs. Kids who are most interested in cooking will benefit most in culinary education. Those who show enterprising flair even at young age are best honed by business related courses. Those who aspire to build buildings and bridges may be better-off with engineering or architecture courses. Farmers are best empowered with community-based trainings on advance methods in sustainable food production, crop management, use of technological equipment, and agri-trade. Fisher-folks benefit most on trainings in sustainable fisheries, fishing management, and food manufacturing.

Needs assessment is a requisite in empowering people. Know first the particular circumstances and challenges of the people you intend to empower so you can draw appropriate education programs for them. Unless the skills trainings you are planning to implement are needs-based, it will end-up futile because it will fail to respond to people’s aspirations.

Only empowered people can effectively empower others. You cannot entice people to go through process of learning new things unless they see in you that learned power. You have to exude that stance of knowledge and credence which you can only acquire after being educated and honed. You do not need a degree to achieve that, appropriate knowledge and skills will do.

Empowering people can be tedious and wearisome since it involves series of extensive processes. You have to anchor your people empowerment goals to a deeply rooted sense of mission and a clear vision. Know very well what you intend to achieve. Then thresh-out your motives into a mission geared at achieving your vision. Then draw-out goals and specific objectives for your courses of actions. Unless you are anchored like this, you will end-up giving-up at every empowering project that cause you difficulties.

Your vision for which you endeavour empowering people must be centred on the people. The focus of the whole process of educating and training people is only the people- their needs and challenges, their aspirations and goals, their welfare and future development. Everything that you labour for to empower people becomes futile if it fail to respond to their needs and achieve what they aspire for. Education no matter how rigid and vital end-up futile if it does not benefit the one being educated. It happens that people being trained would drop-out of the training because they do not see themselves carrying out what they are training for. Students drop out of their courses because they do not see how it could help them in their future endeavour.

Empowering people can come in different types- economic, cultural, religious, political, societal or national. Some educate people for purely economic goals such as livelihood and income-generating projects. Others teach cultural and religious concepts. There are those who educate people towards specific political, society, or national agenda. The most effective empowering, regardless of type, is still the one that best responds to the needs and aspiration of the people. People cannot care much about political and national issues if they most pressing concerns are hunger, poverty, and deprivation. There are those, though, whose mind-set are fixed at achieving political mileage that they labour to master culture and society for much higher political and national goals.