Empowerment What is empowerment? Making participants feel like they can be themselves without shame, can fully realize themselves in a group and leave the group with more confidence also in the outside world. To achieve empowerment, self-help, self-advocacy-groups, selfeducation and self-empowerment-campaigns are important sources. Empowerment needs to focus on collaboration, a strength perspective, subject-centeredness, a context of orientation, solidarity professionalism and partisanship. Where does empowerment as a concept come from? The concept of “empowerment” has different origins. Partially they lie in the Civil Rights Movement in the US, the Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire and different movements for the rights of people with disabilities. Methods for Empowerment: -
SWAT-Analysis Theater of the oppressed Internships and Volunteering Storytelling / Living library Self-help & support-groups Involve people into decision-making & structures which shape their life (e.g. Group Agreement) Open Space Doing art, music, creative stuff Playing with gender expression (e.g. through Drag) Creating community on social media Silent Exhibiton Action-focused workshops
Dos and Don’ts for Empowerment Don’t: -
Take control of the situation from/out of other people Speak, decide for people or make assumptions, explore or ask what the people need Give up Forget to look at yourself Force opinion/actions Put individuals in the spotlight Think the method works for everyone Make the message hard to understand Ignore other problems Whataboutism: look at many perspectives/ problems, focus on the subject at hand.
But do:
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