"This document offers an excellent explanation of the concept of empowerment and develops a very useful framework for disentangling and clarifying the concept. It is both practical and well justified on the basis of the literature. The approach and survey instruments developed to measure empowerment are innovative and very useful. Developing an approach to empirically measure empowerment, and to track empowerment indicators over time in a way that is operationally feasible and consistent with World Bank standards is certainly an outstanding achievement."Reginer Birner, Senior Researc.
This book integrates time-honored approaches to empowerment practice with today's more modest goals, mindful of what empowerment can and cannot do. Synthesizing several theoretical supports--the strengths perspective, system theory, theories of family well-being, and theories of coping--the author responds to the question "What works?" with today's families in need. Practice illustrations are provided throughout.
First published in 1994, this book was hailed as a cutting-edge, theory-driven report from the front-line trenches in the battle for social justice. Both clinical and community oriented and written from a global perspective, it presents clients speaking for themselves alongside reports of prominent social work educators. This new edition puts greater emphasis on "how-to" skills in working with people toward their own empowerment and stresses multiculturalism. A new chapter identifies worldwide issues of oppression such as abuse of women and children and neglect of the mentally ill.
What principles should guide an empowerment evaluation? And how can these principles actually be put into practice? One of the primary tasks in an empowerment evaluation (EE) is to increase the capacity of program stakeholders to plan, implement, and evaluate their own programs. This book presents the most current formulation of the 10 principles of EE and provides professionals and students with the tools to put these principles into practice. Through case studies of diverse evaluation projects--including community health foundation initiatives, school district programs, and a $15 million corporate program aimed at bridging the digital divide--the founder and leading proponents of EE clarify key concepts and discuss important lessons learned. Coverage includes how to balance program improvement efforts with accountability requirements; how EE can be used to guide standards-based work; how to use EE in a learning organization; the differences among empowerment, collaborative, and participatory evaluation; and much more.
′This book, written from an international perspective and thus eminently readable by a wider audience, draws on the author′s considerable experience and is amply supplied with a good range of illustrations from real-life practice...The logical structure and accessible style makes this a useful addition to the personal library of anyone who has an interest in "bottom-up" empowerment-based approaches to health promotion′ - RCN Research Headlines ′The author draws on a wealth of personal experiences in the field, giving the book both readability and credibility. Good examples from different international contexts, illustrated in relevant case studies, let the reader relate theory to practice and bring the concepts to life. The author takes the central thrust of health promotion for the past few decades and unravels it for the reader in a clear, comprehensive way′ - Health Matters In health promotion, the concept of power can be defined as the ability to create or resist change, and this is an important foundation for individual and community health. By enabling people to empower themselves, health promoters can provide the capacity for the individual or community to change their lives and their living conditions, and therefore their health. Health Promotion Practice explores the issue of how such an approach to health promotion practice can improve a community′s success towards achieving healthier conditions through its own actions. Placing empowerment at the heart of health promotion practice, and offering advice for health promoters who accept the challenge to work in such a way, Health Promotion Practice defines key concepts of health, health promotion and community empowerment. It also: Introduces readers to a ′social′ model of health promotion practice, one that attempts to get at the underlying social determinants of disease; Helps readers understand the importance of power relations and their transformation in this practice; Introduces readers to a new `community capacity-building′ approach to plan, implement and evaluate health promotion programmes. Health Promotion Practice is an invaluable resource to students and practitioners of health promotion who want to help empower the communities that they work with.
This is a book that will address the ways in which the theory andd of empowerment can be established and sustained in a variety of community settings and for a variety of target groups, and that may operate at different levels, from individual to societal.In this book, the authors aim to explore and illustrate how inclusive communities can be created and sustained through the development and implementation of empowerment strategies at various levels: Individual, peer, community and societal. The authors utilize the framework of the Dynamic Synergy Model, outlined in Chapter Two, as the context in which we can understand and then actualize the ideals of inclusive communities.In the first two chapters of this volume, the authors outline the concept of inclusive communities, beginning with the initial notion of inclusion, and how that concept has been applied in a variety of settings. They then discuss the topic of empowerment, its theoretical foundations and evolution, including a critique of the concept and the inherent power dynamics of community-based work. In Chapter Two, the authors outline the various levels of empowerment, introduce the Dynamic Synergy Model and delineate a variety of components for establishing and sustaining empowering activities at a variety of levels, in various settings, with evidence or goals for any of the elements outlined for establishing and sustaining empowerment goals with a variety of methods. The authors especially encourage contributions that can illustrate the implementation and/or evaluation of work that exemplifies the Dynamic Synergy Model.
Dr Kinlaw, one of America's leading authorities on management development, sees empowerment as a way of improving organizational performance by making the most competent people the most influential most of the time, and his book provides a comprehensive and detailed model for achieving this objective. Drawing on examples and case studies from successful companies, Dr Kinlaw describes a practical, step-by-step process for introducing or extending empowerment in an organization or any part of an organization, and shows how to use feedback, team development and learning to good effect.
As a philosophy and method of practice, empowerment provides a way to rethink one's approach to social work practice. This book provides specific examples of how empowerment practice is conducted in the field and gives social workers tools for incorporating empowerment in their own practice. In addition to Gutierrez, Parsons, and Cox, 13 authors contribute writings that demonstrate how empowerment practice can be used in different settings and with different populations. Empowerment in Social Work Practice presents a comprehensive model for empowerment practice with applications to key populations across all three levels of social work practice (micro, mezzo, and macro) and even to research, policy, evaluation, and administration.
As a philosophy and method of practice, empowerment provides a way to rethink one's approach to social work practice. This book provides specific examples of how empowerment practice is conducted in the field and gives social workers tools for incorporating empowerment in their own practice. In addition to Gutierrez, Parsons, and Cox, 13 authors contribute writings that demonstrate how empowerment practice can be used in different settings and with different populations. Empowerment in Social Work Practice presents a comprehensive model for empowerment practice with applications to key populations across all three levels of social work practice (micro, mezzo, and macro) and even to research, policy, evaluation, and administration.
"Alsop and Heinsohn present an analytic framework that can be used to measure and monitor empowerment processes and outcomes. The measuring empowerment framework, rooted in both conceptual discourse and measurement practice, illustrates how to gather data on empowerment and structure its analysis. The framework can be used to measure empowerment at both the intervention level and the country level, as a part of poverty or governance monitoring. The authors first provide a definition of empowerment and then explain how the concept can be reduced to measurable components. Empowerment is defined as a person's capacity to make effective choices--that is, the capacity to transform choices into desired actions and outcomes. The extent or degree to which a person is empowered is influenced by personal agency (the capacity to make purposive choice) and opportunity structure (the institutional context in which choice is made). Asset endowments are used as indicators of agency. These assets may be psychological, informational, organizational, material, social, financial, or human. Opportunity structure is measured by the presence and operation of formal and informal institutions, including the laws, regulatory frameworks, and norms governing behavior. Degrees of empowerment are measured by the existence of choice, the use of choice, and the achievement of choice. Following the conceptual discussion and the presentation of the analytic framework, the authors show how the measuring empowerment framework can be applied using examples from four development interventions. Each example discusses how the framework guided analysis and development of empowerment indicators. They also present a draft module for measuring empowerment at the country level. The module can be used alone or be integrated into country-level poverty or governance monitoring systems that seek to add an empowerment dimension to their analysis. This paper--a product of the Poverty Reduction Group, Poverty Reduction and Economic Management Network--is part of a larger effort in the network to conceptualize, operationalize, and measure empowerment"--Abstract.
