Empowerment and Citizen

Participation
 What Is Empowerment?
• Rappaport (1981) suggested that empowerment is aimed toward
enhancing the possibilities for people to control their own lives.
• a process, a mechanism by which people, organizations, and communities
gain mastery over their affairs” (Rappaport, 1987, p. 122).
• Empowerment involves gaining and exercising greater power (access to
resources).
• Empowerment is a multilevel concept: individuals, organizations,
communities, and societies can become more empowered (Rappaport,
1987).
• Empowerment is contextual: It differs across organizations, localities,
communities, and cultures because of the differing histories, experiences,
and environments of each
 Multiple Forms Of Power
• There are three types of power and each type of power works in social and
community life.
• Power over is the capacity to compel or dominate others—often through
control of valued rewards or punishment. This type of power is built on force,
domination and control, and motivates largely through fear. This form of
power is built on a belief that power is a finite resource that can be held by
individuals, and that some people have power and some people do not.
• Power to concerns the ability of individuals or groups to pursue their own
goals and to develop one’s capacities. It is built on the “unique potential of
every person to shape his or her life and world”. This form of power promotes
inclusivity, shared decision-making, and the distribution of responsibility.
• Power from is an ability to resist
the power or unwanted demands
of others. It can be used to resist
a dominant boss or friend or to
resist wider forms of social
oppression.

• Integrative Power is the capacity

to work together, build groups,
bind people together, and inspire
loyalty.
 Personal Qualities for Citizen Participation
and Empowerment
• Six personal qualities seem common among empowered persons
engaged in citizen participation (zimmerman (2000)). But remember that
empowerment is contextual. It develops in a specific setting, community,
and culture and is strongly influenced by those contexts.
• Critical awareness: “critical judgment about situations [and] the search for
underlying causes of problems and their consequences”. Critical
awareness is understanding hierarchies of oppression, dominant and
subordinated groups, and social myths that sustain such hierarchies of
power. Critical awareness emerges from three sources: life experiences
with injustices, reflection on those experiences and lessons learned, and
dialogue with others.
• Participatory skills:to be effective in citizen participation, the person also
needs behavioral skills.
i. Assertively and constructively advocating one’s views.
ii. Actively listening to others, including opponents.
iii. Avoiding burnout by finding ways to sustain commitment
iv. Planning strategies for community change
v. Finding, using, and providing social support
• Sense of collective efficacy: this is the belief that citizens acting collectively
can be effective in improving community life. Belief in collective efficacy
usually arises along with personal experience in citizen participation.
Citizens with stronger beliefs related to critical awareness, collective
efficacy, or both, participated more in community organizations and
experienced a stronger sense of community. Sense of collective efficacy
served as a foundation for mental health and wellness in rural
communities.
• Sense of personal participatory efficacy: this is the individual’s belief that he
or she personally has the capacity to engage effectively in citizen
participation and influence community decisions. At its strongest, this
includes confidence that one can be an effective leader in citizen action. This
is not simply feeling empowered; it must also be connected to behavioral
participation. It is a contextual belief; one can feel more effective in some
situations than in others.
• Participatory values and commitment: beliefs about efficacy are not enough
to motivate citizen action. Participation is often initiated and sustained by
commitment to deeply held values. Moral commitment sustained citizen
participation and empowerment. This involved spiritual faith and practices,
spiritual support, beliefs and a capacity for forgiveness in the rough and
tumble of community decision making was also important.
• Relational Connections: Empowerment and citizen participation do not occur
in a social vacuum. They involve a wide variety of relationships with others,
including both bonding and bridging ties. They also include social support
and mentoring for participation, neighboring, and participating in community
 Empowering Practices And Settings
• Empowering practices and settings is intended to provide tools for
observing and for acting with others in your community. Remember that
collaborative change agents may be found in a variety of roles, including
students, teachers, grandparents, youth leaders, scientists, artists.
• Empowering practices is more generally a concern with the routine
activities that maintain and/or transform role relationships within settings. It
is a concern with the way professional helpers and experts approach their
work—as facilitators and partners and as teachers and learners. It leads
us to an examination of the opportunities for reciprocal helping, for mutual
influence, for collaboration, for decision making, and for creating change.
An emphasis on empowering practices focuses our attention on how
diverse experiences, strengths, and capacities are developed and affirmed
in routine dialogue and communication.
• Empowering settings foster member participation and sharing or power in
group decisions and actions. They serve as viable and vital relational
communities (Maton, 2008).
• Empowered settings exercise power in the wider community or society,
influencing decisions and helping to create community and macrosystem
change.
• But being empowering and empowered do not always go together.
Organizations that exclude rank and file members from any real decision-
making power may nonetheless be powerful forces in communities and
societies.
• Promoting a strengths-based belief system: empowering community
settings promote principles or beliefs that define member and
organizational goals, provide meaning and inspiration for action, develop
strengths, and promote optimism in the face of setbacks. Shared
community events, rituals, and narratives embody core values and
strengthen sense of community as well as personal commitment to the
group.
• Fostering social support: empowering settings attend to the quality and
nature of interpersonal relationships in a setting and promote exchange of
social support among members. Social support is key to the work of family
resource centers, where traditionally isolated parents of young children
with disabilities, for example, share stories, learn from one another, and
exchange information and resources. Social support and interpersonal ties
among members also build organizational solidarity and power for
influencing the wider community
• Developing Leadership: Empowering settings have committed leaders who
articulate a vision for the organization, exemplify interpersonal and
organizational skills, share power, and mentor new leaders. Sharing
leadership and developing new leaders were also important.
• Providing Participatory Niches and Opportunity Role Structures:
Empowering organizations create roles and tasks that offer opportunities
for members to become involved and assume responsibility: participatory
niches or opportunity role structures.
• Participatory niches promote recruitment and training of individuals for
roles needed by the setting, increase members’ leadership skills, and
strengthen their interpersonal ties within the group.
• In opportunity role structures, members also develop skills within an
organization. Power comes not just from participation but also from
opportunities to develop the necessary skills and competencies in order to
be able to have real influence in settings.
• Keeping a Focus on Tasks and Goals: Many citizens prefer to become
involved in community organizations that get things done, with clear goals
and productive meetings. This includes having organization goals and
specific objectives for action, meeting agendas, time limits, and leaders who
can summarize lengthy discussions and clarify choices to be made.
• Making Decisions Inclusively: This is the essence of citizen participation:
widespread, genuine power and voice for citizens in making organizational
decisions and plans. More inclusive decision making strengthened both
citizen participation and organizational viability. Community coalitions
function best when decisions are inclusive. The best predictor of council
effectiveness (as perceived by its members) was an inclusive climate of
shared decision making in which members from many community agencies
and groups actively participated.
• Rewarding Participation: Community groups rely on volunteers. If those
volunteers do not find their involvement rewarding or if its personal costs are
too high, they will leave. If they find involvement rewarding, they will often
become more involved. Empowering community settings provide rewards for
• Promoting Diversity Empowering community organizations value member
diversity, which can broaden the skills, knowledge, resources, legitimacy,
and social connections available to the setting. For community coalitions
and other organizations that seek to represent multiple parts of a
community, seeking diversity is essential. Promoting diverse participation
includes having several members from a disenfranchised group, not just
one token member. Finally, diversity is not fully realized until the
leadership, not simply the membership, is diverse.
• Fostering Intergroup Collaboration: Promoting diversity can generate
challenges for a setting. Community members share an overall sense of
community but also have identifications with other groups within or outside
the community. Organizations also need to develop practices and member
skills in identifying, discussing, managing, and resolving conflicts. Conflict
is often a useful resource: for learning about problems and for creative
ideas for action. It is often helpful to reframe conflicts as shared problems,
not simply blame others, and search for shared values or goals based on
the organizations belief system.