Characteristics of an Empowered Community

While the interviewees were rather easily able to identify some key characteristics defining an empowered individual, it seemed more problematic to define an empowered community, the ultimate goal of the Community Empowerment Programs. Indeed, sometimes the interviewees referred to the stage of graduation, the final stage of the CEPs, whereby they listed some criteria and indicators that they had, understandably, assumed from the strategies and programs of the NGO. These indicators fall, however, in the category of instrumental rather than genuine empowerment.

Seen through this “instrumental lense”, an empowered community is e.g. making action plans and actively implementing the plans, measuring their achievements, keeping regular meetings, using their resources more effectively and using social services. It shall be argued that these kinds of characteristics are instrumental, as they put largely emphasis on the quantitative aspects of a potential change, reflecting primarily some newly acquired behaviors, instead of more in-depth attitudinal changes. Having said that, as also discussed earlier, a behavior change such as starting to use the dispensary instead of going to the witch doctor can also reflect a deeper change in the mindset of the individuals.

An empowered community was also said to be characterized by improved infrastructure, improved housing, improved health facilities and better access to social services. These material improvements do not directly have to do with the mindset of the individuals or the collective, but will most likely act as catalysts for empowerment at a later stage. In fact, material improvements in the lives of the formerly marginalized can give a feeling of well-being and comfort, which are essential ingredients in building up self-esteem, a characteristic of an empowered individual.

A genuinely empowered community, just like the individual, is independent, not depending on any external support but able to manage on their own, self-motivated and able to independently face and solve whatever problems they might encounter. Empowered community is active, with everyone participating and contributing equally to the common good, the importance of hard work being commonly recognized:

“Through empowerment, they recognize, if you can’t work hard, you will be poor forever. So you have to take initiative to work hard to change your life. So they work hard.” (F6)

An empowered community is generally characterized by a strong team spirit, positive group dynamics and unity. The community works actively together and participates in the building up of development with the final aim being to achieve the common good. The importance of collaboration is thus acknowledged, whereby the community recognizes the human value of each and every member of the collective – the marginalized, women and disabled included – allowing and encouraging them to participate in the common activities and decision-making:

“The important change is value… valuing the others, for example the disabled, or the marginalized, to be valued by others.” (M10)

As for women, previously accepting the subordinate role to men, they are now

“waking up”, becoming aware of their rights and standing up for themselves.

Women are taking more initiative, contesting and being elected to leadership positions, and generally having a better status with respect to men. In an empowered community, women and men, poor and better off are mixing together, no one being left out. Men are also accepting women in leadership positions, and allowing them to try their wings, to be more independent and in control of their own life. In fact, this change of attitudes in men can be considered as a spillover or snowball effect: even though not directly taking part in the CEP trainings, men are learning from women, by their teachings and just by observing them. Moreover, very successful individuals, e.g. women having

started their own business or taken up leadership positions, are considered as role models, appreciated and “imitated” by the other members of the community.

Thus, it shall be argued that in a community with positive group dynamics, empowerment will spread rather easily. The question is whether or not this spillover effect happens rather spontaneously, or if it requires a catalyst, or an active “pulling force” to direct it. This question, as well as other empowerment enablers shall be treated further in the following paragraphs.

The description of an empowered community by one of the interviewee, elaborate and genuine, deserves to be treated separately. According to the interviewee, empowered community is essentially characterized by effectiveness:

the community, having the right tools of analysis, is able to determine the pros and cons of any action before doing it and therefore to have more sustainable projects, plans and resolutions:

“So ideally any empowered community is a community where you’ll have really effective people who will participate in their own development, people who can plan, people who can resolve, people who can effectively participate, and basically you see development. […] and you’ll find people are really… living in harmony.” (M8)

In my personal experience, the last phrase of the above commentary perfectly describes the general atmosphere in an empowered community: with empowerment, there is a general feeling of harmony in the community, which can involve e.g. ideas of democracy, collaboration, general acceptance, mutual support and appreciation, as well as peace and serenity. The feeling of harmony can also happen in the mind of an individual, but it shall be argued that it will be even stronger within a collective.

In sum, a genuinely empowered community is an active, dynamic and harmonious collective with egalitarian and democratic values, having initiative and being able to survive on its own, without depending on external support.

Characteristic to an empowered community is also its contagiousness: the

empowerment of an individual, or of an entire community, often spreads around and inspires other individuals and communities as well:

“Because, when you speak of communities, we don’t want to have dormant community, we want to have active citizens, citizens who know ‘this is right – this is wrong’, citizens who can see that ‘this is a problem, we want to address it’. Ideal, empowered community, it’s self-aware community, or community which knows and have values, a community which are able to make the decision on their own, a community where you can see […] even as individuals, growth, and they come more aware, more analytical, they are more participatory, or active citizens and… are able to even inspire and bring changes to other people! Because a very effective empowered community will always have this terminology which is called the spillover effect. It can’t just be by itself.” (M15)

Therefore, going back to the question raised in the earlier paragraph and to take further Eklund’s (1999) observation on the cumulative nature of community empowerment, I shall argue that the collective form of empowerment, whenever genuine and sustainable, is actually more than the sum of its parts, i.e. something more than the combined empowerment of the individuals within the community.

To give a concrete example, we shall compare the spread of empowerment to the knowledge transfer between the villagers. As explained by one of the interviewed community members, once a trained individual passes the learned knowledge on to the other community members, it often happens that those being trained “second-hand” will build up an even larger knowledge base than the person having had “first-hand” training, as a result of the accumulation of knowledge, whereby the already existing knowledge of both the trained and the non-trained individuals together is complemented by the new knowledge acquired in the trainings. Therefore, it is possible that the second hand-trained individual even exceeds the first-hand trained individual in their knowledge base.

In sum, on a collective level, empowerment becomes feeding and self-expanding, spilling over to its surroundings, and also having effects not necessarily found solely on the individual level, such as the idea of harmony, democracy and equality.