Daily Archives: March 27, 2017

The term empowerment refers to measures designed to increase the degree of autonomy and self-determination in people and in communities in order to enable them to represent their interests in a responsible and self-determined way, acting on their own authority. 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.

The term empowerment originates from American community psychology and is associated[by whom?] with the social scientist Julian Rappaport (1981).[1]

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]

Robert Adams points to the limitations of any single definition of 'empowerment', and the danger that academic or specialist definitions might take away the word and the connected practices from the very people they are supposed to belong to.[2] Still, he offers a minimal definition of the term: 'Empowerment: the capacity of individuals, groups and/or communities to take control of their circumstances, exercise power and achieve their own goals, and the process by which, individually and collectively, they are able to help themselves and others to maximize the quality of their lives.'[3]

One definition for the term is "an intentional, ongoing process centered in the local community, involving mutual respect, critical reflection, caring, and group participation, through which people lacking an equal share of resources gain greater access to and control over those resources".[4][5]

Rappaport's (1984) definition includes: "Empowerment is viewed as a process: the mechanism by which people, organizations, and communities gain mastery over their lives."[6]

Sociological empowerment often addresses members of groups that social discrimination processes have excluded from decision-making processes through for example discrimination based on disability, race, ethnicity, religion, or gender. Empowerment as a methodology is also associated with feminism.

Empowerment is the process of obtaining basic opportunities for marginalized people, either directly by those people, or through the help of non-marginalized others who share their own access to these opportunities. It also includes actively thwarting attempts to deny those opportunities. Empowerment also includes encouraging, and developing the skills for, self-sufficiency, with a focus on eliminating the future need for charity or welfare in the individuals of the group. This process can be difficult to start and to implement effectively.

One empowerment strategy is to assist marginalized people to create their own nonprofit organization, using the rationale that only the marginalized people, themselves, can know what their own people need most, and that control of the organization by outsiders can actually help to further entrench marginalization. Charitable organizations lead from outside of the community, for example, can disempower the community by entrenching a dependence charity or welfare. A nonprofit organization can target strategies that cause structural changes, reducing the need for ongoing dependence. Red Cross, for example, can focus on improving the health of indigenous people, but does not have authority in its charter to install water-delivery and purification systems, even though the lack of such a system profoundly, directly and negatively impacts health. A nonprofit composed of the indigenous people, however, could ensure their own organization does have such authority and could set their own agendas, make their own plans, seek the needed resources, do as much of the work as they can, and take responsibility and credit for the success of their projects (or the consequences, should they fail).

The process of which enables individuals/groups to fully access personal or collective power, authority and influence, and to employ that strength when engaging with other people, institutions or society. In other words, "Empowerment is not giving people power, people already have plenty of power, in the wealth of their knowledge and motivation, to do their jobs magnificently. We define empowerment as letting this power out."[7] It encourages people to gain the skills and knowledge that will allow them to overcome obstacles in life or work environment and ultimately, help them develop within themselves or in the society.

To empower a female "...sounds as though we are dismissing or ignoring males, but the truth is, both genders desperately need to be equally empowered."[8] Empowerment occurs through improvement of conditions, standards, events, and a global perspective of life.

Before there can be the finding that a particular group requires empowerment and that therefore their self-esteem needs to be consolidated on the basis of awareness of their strengths, there needs to be a deficit diagnosis usually carried out by experts assessing the problems of this group. The fundamental asymmetry of the relationship between experts and clients is usually not questioned by empowerment processes. It also needs to be regarded critically, in how far the empowerment approach is really applicable to all patients/clients. It is particularly questionable whether mentally ill people in acute crisis situations are in a position to make their own decisions. According to Albert Lenz, people behave primarily regressive in acute crisis situations and tend to leave the responsibility to professionals.[9] It must be assumed, therefore, that the implementation of the empowerment concept requires a minimum level of communication and reflectivity of the persons involved.

In social work, empowerment offers an approach that allows social workers to increase the capacity for self-help of their clients. For example, this allows clients not to be seen as passive, helpless 'victims' to be rescued but instead as a self-empowered person fighting abuse/ oppression; a fight, in which the social worker takes the position of a facilitator, instead of the position of a 'rescuer'.[10]

Marginalized people who lack self-sufficiency become, at a minimum, dependent on charity, or welfare. They lose their self-confidence because they cannot be fully self-supporting. The opportunities denied them also deprive them of the pride of accomplishment which others, who have those opportunities, can develop for themselves. This in turn can lead to psychological, social and even mental health problems. "Marginalized" here refers to the overt or covert trends within societies whereby those perceived as lacking desirable traits or deviating from the group norms tend to be excluded by wider society and ostracized as undesirables.

According to Robert Adams, there is a long tradition in the UK and the USA respectively to advance forms of self-help that have developed and contributed to more recent concepts of empowerment. For example, the free enterprise economic theories of Milton Friedman embraced self-help as a respectable contributor to the economy. Both the Republicans in the US and the Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher built on these theories. 'At the same time, the mutual aid aspects of the concept of self-help retained some currency with socialists and democrats.'[11]

In economic development, the empowerment approach focuses on mobilizing the self-help efforts of the poor, rather than providing them with social welfare. Economic empowerment is also the empowering of previously disadvantaged sections of the population, for example, in many previously colonized African countries.[12]

Legal empowerment happens when marginalised people or groups use the legal mobilisation i.e., law, legal systems and justice mechanisms to improve or transform their social, political or economic situations. Legal empowerment approaches are interested in understanding how they can use the law to advance interests and priorities of the marginalised.[13]

According to 'Open society foundations' (an NGO) "Legal empowerment is about strengthening the capacity of all people to exercise their rights, either as individuals or as members of a community. Legal empowerment is about grass root justice, about ensuring that law is not confined to books or courtrooms, but rather is available and meaningful to ordinary people.[14]

Lorenzo Cotula in his book ' Legal Empowerment for Local Resource Control ' outlines the fact that legal tools for securing local resource rights are enshrined in legal system, does not necessarily mean that local resource users are in position to use them and benefit from them. The state legal system is constrained by a range of different factors from lack of resources to cultural issues. Among these factors economic, geographic, linguistic and other constraints on access to courts, lack of legal awareness as well as legal assistance tend to be recurrent problems.[15]

In many context, marginalised groups do not trust the legal system owing to the widespread manipulation that it has historically been subjected to by the more powerful. 'To what extent one knows the law, and make it work for themselves with 'para legal tools', is legal empowerment; assisted utilizing innovative approaches like legal literacy and awareness training, broadcasting legal information, conducting participatory legal discourses, supporting local resource user in negotiating with other agencies and stake holders and to strategies combining use of legal processes with advocacy along with media engagement, and socio legal mobilisation.[15]

Sometimes groups are marginalized by society at large, with governments participating in the process of marginalization. Equal opportunity laws which actively oppose such marginalization, are supposed to allow empowerment to occur. These laws made it illegal to restrict access to schools and public places based on race. They can also be seen as a symptom of minorities' and women's empowerment through lobbying.

Gender empowerment conventionally refers to the empowerment of women, which is a significant topic of discussion in regards to development and economics nowadays. It also points to approaches regarding other marginalized genders in a particular political or social context. This approach to empowerment is partly informed by feminism and employed legal empowerment by building on international human rights. Empowerment is one of the main procedural concerns when addressing human rights and development. The Human Development and Capabilities Approach, The Millennium Development Goals, and other credible approaches/goals point to empowerment and participation as a necessary step if a country is to overcome the obstacles associated with poverty and development.[16] The UN Sustainable Development Goals targets gender equality and women's empowerment for the global development agenda.[17]

According to Thomas A. Potterfield,[18] many organizational theorists and practitioners regard employee empowerment as one of the most important and popular management concepts of our time.

Ciulla discusses an inverse case: that of bogus empowerment.[19]

In the sphere of management and organizational theory, "empowerment" often refers loosely to processes for giving subordinates (or workers generally) greater discretion and resources: distributing control in order to better serve both customers and the interests of employing organizations.

One account of the history of workplace empowerment in the United States recalls the clash of management styles in railroad construction in the American West in the mid-19th century, where "traditional" hierarchical East-Coast models of control encountered individualistic pioneer workers, strongly supplemented by methods of efficiency-oriented "worker responsibility" brought to the scene by Chinese laborers. In this case, empowerment at the level of work teams or brigades achieved a notable (but short-lived) demonstrated superiority. See the views of Robert L. Webb.

During the 1980s and 1990s, empowerment has become a point of interest in management concepts and business administration. In this context, empowerment involves approaches that promise greater participation and integration to the employee in order to cope with their tasks as independently as possible and responsibly can. A strength-based approach known as "empowerment circle" has become an instrument of organizational development. Multidisciplinary empowerment teams aim for the development of quality circles to improve the organizational culture, strengthening the motivation and the skills of employees. The target of subjective job satisfaction of employees is pursued through flat hierarchies, participation in decisions, opening of creative effort, a positive, appreciative team culture, self-evaluation, taking responsibility (for results), more self-determination and constant further learning. The optimal use of existing potential and abilities can supposedly be better reached by satisfied and active workers. Here, knowledge management contributes significantly to implement employee participation as a guiding principle, for example through the creation of communities of practice.[20]

However, it is important to ensure that the individual employee has the skills to meet their allocated responsibilities and that the company's structure sets up the right incentives for employees to reward their taking responsibilities. Otherwise there is a danger of being overwhelmed or even becoming lethargic.[21]

Empowerment of employees requires a culture of trust in the organization and an appropriate information and communication system. The aim of these activities is to save control costs, that become redundant when employees act independently and in a self-motivated fashion. In the book Empowerment Takes More Than a Minute, the authors illustrate three keys that organizations can use to open the knowledge, experience, and motivation power that people already have.[7] The three keys that managers must use to empower their employees are:

According to Stewart, in order to guarantee a successful work environment, managers need to exercise the "right kind of authority" (p.6). To summarize, "empowerment is simply the effective use of a managers authority", and subsequently, it is a productive way to maximize all-around work efficiency.[22]

These keys are hard to put into place and it is a journey to achieve empowerment in a workplace. It is important to train employees and make sure they have trust in what empowerment will bring to a company.[7]

The implementation of the concept of empowerment in management has also been criticised for failing to live up to its claims.[23]

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Empowerment - Wikipedia

It's not my fault but it is my problem.

This is a Disney World mantra that you should adopt if you're serious about customer service.

When a customer comes to you with a complaint, you don't duck, dodge or do nothing. You don't transfer their call, forward their email or tell them to talk to someone else. You don't pass the buck or say your hands are tied and nothing can be done.

Instead, you clean up the mess, even if it's not of your making. You own the problem and stay with your customer until she gets a solution or resolution.

"Obsessive customer service is one of the best ways to trump the competition," says Terry O'Reilly, author of "This I Know: Marketing Lessons from Under the Influence," co-founder of Pirate Radio and Television and a CBC radio host. "Your competitor's lack of obsessive customer service is your opportunity. Delivering consistent, superlative, standout customer service is one of the best ways to cause your competitors to find you really, completely irritating."

Yes, customer service will cost you money. But it will make you far more money than you invest, says O'Reilly.

"Memorable, outstanding, go-the-extra-mile, I-can't-believe-you-just-did-that-for-me customer service is as rare as a winning lottery ticket. But if played daily, it is a winning lottery ticket for the company. The return on investment is tenfold."

That's because great customer service fuels word of mouth, which O'Reilly calls the most powerful advertising of all. Happy customers rave, dissatisfied customers rant and social media gives both a huge audience.

One way to earn rave reviews is to go the extra inch.

"Smart businesses search for ways to deliver the smallest touches to make an experience memorable. The smaller the detail, the more intrigued and impressed I am," says O'Reilly.

Along with being a game of inches, marketing starts by answering a fundamental question: What business are you really in?

"Don't answer that question too quickly. Most people get it wrong. Yet it's the most important marketing question you can ask yourself. Until you answer it correctly, your marketing will always lack focus," says O'Reilly. "If you truly know what business you're in, you will be selling the right thing and solving the right problems."

What you're selling and what we're buying can be two very different things. You sell products and services, but we buy solutions.

"Customers don't want your product," says O'Reilly. "They want the benefit of the product. People buy benefits. Not products. Not features. And they buy these solutions from companies they can relate to."

Molson isn't in the beer business, says O'Reilly. They're in the party business with beer as the social lubricant.

Michelin doesn't sell tires. They sell safety.

Starbucks is in the coffee theatre business. Nike is in the motivation business. Apple sells personal empowerment, while Coke sells happiness.

"You have to quietly observe what customers are really buying from you. They will tell you, but you have to listen carefully. The best marketers are the best listeners."

Having won hundreds of international advertising awards, O'Reilly is well worth listening to. His book should be required reading for entrepreneurs, small business owners and leaders of nonprofits who don't have monster marketing budgets and ad agencies on retainer.

Jay Robb, director of communications at Mohawk College, reviews business-focused books for The Hamilton Spectator. Follow on Twitter: @jayrobb

Originally posted here:

JAY ROBB: - Hamilton Spectator

Personal Growth and Empowerment Life Coaching classes are geared to provide individuals with tools to find the inner power to make changes within. Healing and understanding the core reason for our actions, thoughts and desires.

These classes are open to everyone regardless of gender, religion, ethnicity or political views. The focus is to awaken the true essence of who we are and how to approach the world, living out our lives pursuing our goals with strength and inner knowledge.

Growth and Empowerment Classes will be offered on Fridays from 5 to 6 p.m. at the Ross Aragon Community Center starting in April.

Crafting Club

Join us for creativity, crafting and idea sharing the fourth Saturday of every month from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Community Center starting in April and running through September.

This will be a time to bring your creativity, projects in progress, supplies and ideas to spend some time being crafty and connect with others who enjoy all aspects of creativity, too.

K.I.D.S. (Kickin it During Summer) Day Camp 2017

Looking for something fun for your child to do this summer? The Town of Pagosa Springs Ross Aragon Community Center Parks and Recreation Department is happy to announce the K.I.D.S. Day Camp is returning.

K.I.D.S. Day Camp is open to children ages 5-12. Each week, participants will experience a day of science/history, a day of exploring, water days and arts/crafts days.

K.I.D.S. Day Camp will start on June 5 and run through Aug. 18. It will be offered Monday through Friday from 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.

Activities scheduled for each day will start at 9 a.m. and will end at 4 p.m. All children that are registered for the week must be signed in and dropped off no later than 9 a.m., no exceptions.

Applications for this program will open up on April 3. Program fees are $85 per child per week, $25 per child per drop (upon availability) in and there is a onetime application fee of $15 per child. Multiple child discounts are also available.

This year, there is a daily max of 50 children per day. Weekly registrations will be required. For more information about this program, please call us at the Community Center, 264-4152, ext. 532.

More information

The Community Center hours are Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. The center is located at 451 Hot Springs Blvd. The phone is 264-4152 and email is lgutierrez@pagosasprings.co.gov. Dont forget to look at our website, http://townofpagosasprings.com, for upcoming events at the center or like our Facebook Page: Ross Aragon Community Center Parks and Recreation Department, for updates on current events, activities, recreational programs happening.

Follow these topics: Community Center News, Lifestyle

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Personal Growth and Empowerment Life Coaching classes beginning in April - Pagosa Springs Sun

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Have we, as Americans, broken the internet? Everything is amazing and terrible, all at the same time.

The ability for an individual to open up worlds of information on a hand-held device is awe-inspiring. If someone who had been in a coma for the last decade woke up today, they would look at a smartphone with utter astonishment.

Surrounded by such wealth of information, we face a new problem: When we have access to all the information in the world, its tantamount to having access to none.

Our society has lost the ability to appropriately filter good ideas from bad, and truth from fiction, a role the media used to play.

A basic tenet of free markets is the idea that the dissemination of more good information creates better market outcomes, assuming were dealing with rational actors. This should be true of goods and services as well as ideas. In theory, the best ideas should rise to the top.

With millions of ideas filtered through millions of people on Facebook walls, Twitter feeds, chat rooms, and 24-hour cable news networks, its logical to think some consensus about politics and culture would ultimately emerge. That, sadly, is not the case. As almost anyone who has scrolled through his social media feed lately will tell you, the cultural and political environment has never felt more fragmented.

Worse: What happens when all the trusted sources necessary to filter ideas have betrayed the trust of the people? What serves as a filter?

The way coverage has changed over the last decade is stunning. Newspapers, radio stations, and television are all driven in large part by the internet and social media content. It strains newsrooms and traditional journalists, relentlessly challenging reporting and ethical standards.

People feel violated and lied to when media outlets fall short. Whether it was the revelation that CNN contributor Donna Brazile shared debate questions with Hillary Clintons campaign, or the full retraction of a story from Fox about Trump dissenters bused into Austin to protest the new President (they werent), people have been given ample reason for their skepticism.

A Gallup poll taken in September of last year showed us that our trust in traditional mass media outlets has dropped to historically low levels.

One solution to the problems of an erosion of trust and a false objective standard is to simply forego the mass media filter. The internet and social media allow us to easily and readily find stories that seem tailored to even the most niche reader.

We no longer must rely on a single source to find the take that is most salient to our perspective its all out there and likely already in our news feed. Many newer media outlets dont pretend not to have a slant, and as a result, a rational person can look at content and take the source into account. This customization shifts the power of information dissemination away from a few elites and broadly distributes it among those willing to create content.

But that personal empowerment is not without costs.

I was giving a speech shortly after the election, and one woman eagerly raised her hand to proudly announce that she had unfriended at least 20 people, as if purging others from our virtual lives was a badge of honor. This is a symptom of a larger problem. With the press of a button, we can silence those who challenge, offend, or even hurt us. But doing so prevents the kind of dialogue necessary to reach any understanding with those unlike ourselves.

In economics we believe in a principle of diminishing marginal returns; in essence, the more of a thing we have, the less we value each additional unit of that thing. If someone gives you one orange, you might be thrilled if you dont have one, but if you have 4,000 oranges, being given that additional one will not be as special. Access to information gives us the ability to learn anything, but each additional bit of knowledge becomes less valued. Facebook gives us friends but the cost of losing twenty friends is nothing when you have thousands. In real life, the cost of losing twenty friends would be devastating, but access to volumes of them gives us the luxury of valuing each less.

If we are now our own content generators who can directly communicate with thousands of people at a time, how are we both so connected and so alone? A recent study from the University of Pittsburgh showed that frequent social media users are 2.7 times more prone to depression. Whether thats causal or correlative is unclear.

Many pieces written after the election of Donald Trump outlined the increasingly toxic nature of social media interactions. Fact and discourse have been replaced with feelings and ad hominem attacks directed at those with whom we disagree. Each tweet and trolling comment seemsto simultaneously mean everything and yet mean nothing.

The more access we have to others, the more overwhelmed and tribal we become. Behind the shield of a keyboard, we lose our very civility. We self-curate our inputs when we start with actual friends, the people we know in real life. This expands to those like-minded individuals with whom we have mutual interests or tangential connections. Eventually, between the increased access to information which affirms our life view, and the decreased access to information which challenges us, we enter into a comfortable bubble.

Recent stories decry the young people on college campuses who now require safe spaces from opinions they find objectionable. Merely challenging their premises becomes hate-speech and assault, sometimes met with violence. Although this reaction seems extreme, imagine growing up with only an entirely self-curated set of inputs. People entering college today have had Facebook, Twitter and Instagramfeedstelling them what they want to hear for much of their lives.

Young people are using a new and curious phrase: I am standing in MY truth. The mere fact many now claim truth can be owned by an individual andisthereforesubjective assumes by extension they also believe there is no universal truth.

Like so many hard problems facing America today, the best solution is not easy and it is rooted in personal responsibility. We all must take the time to read in good faith that which offends us, and engage in a civil manner with those with whom we disagree. E.L. Doctorow wrote: You never see further than your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way. Even if your entire trip must be made in the dark, at least make an effort to turn on your brights.

Kelly Maher is the executive director of Compass Colorado. Follow her on Twitter:@okmaher

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Have we broken the internet? - The Denver Post