EMPOWERMENT CONCEPT

A social program should be able to empower its beneficiaries, as the main goal to make the beneficiaries become more empowered after the program finished so that it can leave a sustainable impact.

Empowerment is an effort made by individuals, companies, communities and even countries to advance the community on certain empowerment field.

Empowerment programs can be carried out with several activities such as education, giving motivation and furthermore giving material things in the form of working capital. In other words empowerment can be termed as the process of ‘giving a hook instead of giving fish’, because we hope after the empowerment program the beneficiaries can determine its own goals to become more independent and empowered.

Let’s take an example, such as educational activities in the community about the organic and inorganic waste. After the education finished, of course we hope the community can then manage waste properly, and even reduce the amount of garbage around them. It proved the effectiveness of that empowerment program.

There are 3 things that need to be considered when the empowerment process will be carried out:

First, the program must have a clear concept first. It is about what the final goal is, so that all parties have the same goal from the beginning to the end of the empowerment.

Second, the empowerment program must have quantitative and qualitative targets so that the level of success can be exactly measured daily, weekly and monthly.

Third, know the community’s acceptance. Here all parties must agree on common goals when the program will be implemented. Community acceptance usually depends on the approach of the program facilitator or local champion, if the approach taken is successful and acceptable to the community, then the empowerment program will succeed to achieve the goal.