**Empowerment Concept and Process:**
– Definitions emphasize autonomy, self-determination, and strength-oriented perception.
– Process involves obtaining opportunities, developing self-sufficiency skills, and actively thwarting denial of opportunities.
– Challenges in starting and implementing empowerment effectively are highlighted.
– Encourages individuals to eliminate the future need for charity or welfare.
**Empowerment Strategy and Implementation:**
– Strategy includes creating nonprofit organizations, targeting structural changes, and accessing personal or collective power.
– Focus on letting inherent power out, gaining skills, knowledge, and overcoming obstacles.
– Challenges include questioning fundamental asymmetry, applicability, and external drive for change.
– Importance of communication, reflectivity, and self-empowerment in taking control over one’s life.
**Empowerment in Social Work and Community Psychology:**
– Empowerment in social work shifts clients from passive victims to self-empowered individuals.
– Focus on increasing self-help capacity, facilitating self-empowerment, and regaining self-confidence.
– Addressing marginalized individuals’ lack of self-sufficiency and dependency on charity or welfare.
– Promotes self-supporting abilities and self-confidence in marginalized populations.
**Empowerment in Various Sectors:**
– Health promotion research and practice emphasize individuals gaining control over health factors.
– Economic empowerment focuses on self-help for economic growth and targeting disadvantaged populations.
– Consumer and customer empowerment strategies aim to help individuals make informed choices and develop superior products.
– Corporate governance shifts towards sustainability goals, with a focus on ESG-centric practices.
**Empowerment in Innovation, Leadership, and Further Reading:**
– Innovation studies show the impact of customer empowerment strategies on product demand.
– Employee empowerment in the workplace highlights the importance of authentic empowerment and debunking myths.
– Leadership and empowerment are central themes in organizations, emphasizing intrinsic task motivation.
– Further reading explores empowerment theory, practice, critical perspectives, and community power in-depth.
Empowerment is the degree of autonomy and self-determination in people and in communities. This enables them to represent their interests in a responsible and self-determined way, acting on their own authority. It is the process of becoming stronger and more confident, especially in controlling one's life and claiming one's rights. Empowerment as action refers both to the process of self-empowerment and to professional support of people, which enables them to overcome their sense of powerlessness and lack of influence, and to recognize and use their resources.
As a term, empowerment originates from American community psychology and is associated with the social scientist Julian Rappaport (1981).
In social work, empowerment forms a practical approach of resource-oriented intervention. In the field of citizenship education and democratic education, empowerment is seen[by whom?] as a tool to increase the responsibility of the citizen. Empowerment is a key concept in the discourse on promoting civic engagement. Empowerment as a concept, which is characterized by a move away from a deficit-oriented towards a more strength-oriented perception, can increasingly be found in management concepts, as well as in the areas of continuing education and self-help.[citation needed]