Empower or inspire?

Debate about the appropriateness of the term ‘empowerment’, when used for social sector development work with communities including children, women, girls, youth or any marginalised group of people, is linked with the fundamental repositioning of development work.

The term ‘empower’ or ‘empowerment’ when used in the context of development work implies that certain groups of people are identified to be inherently powerless, waiting to be granted power. An equally misplaced connotation of this term is the idea that some people/organisations/institutions have power and they can bestow this power upon other individuals and groups who in turn become recipients or beneficiaries in this transaction. The other problematic in this development model is the power dynamics in the process – where entitlement to create vision, mission, goals, objectives, design and action plans of empowerment programmes rests with the power centres of funds and technical expertise. Thus in most cases these loci of wealth and wisdom decide the scale and scope of whom, how, when and where to empower.

On the lower side of the skewed platform on the empowerment fulcrum are the individuals or groups that are to be empowered. They are seen as lacking in power due to any or many factors including lower levels of education, skills, livelihood opportunities, legal rights, health or having been affected by some humanitarian crisis. The situation of these people draws the attention of those who can empower – and here they come with funds, resources of expertise and materials to set off the journey of empowerment. The constructs, definitions and tools to assess what empowerment will look like, how it will be attained and by when how many targets towards the goal post of empowerment will be achieved is decided by the organisations with the funds and the experts. In this backdrop, the term ‘empowerment’ seems quite off the mark. The alternative term being suggested and used is ‘to inspire’. However, whatever term is used it should be reflective of how the initiatives are designed, implemented and evaluated.

In the usual design of empowerment programmes, an unbalanced distribution of power among the benefactors and beneficiaries is inherently paradoxical. What else is empowerment than opportunities to exercise power? And where else can it be best exhibited than at the heart of a programme, activity, or intervention aimed at empowering individuals or groups? It is possible to walk the talk in scenarios where actions match intention, where programme goals are more than verbose fluff and where development is not deliberately reduced to achieving numbers and targets.

One possibility in practice can be that programmes aiming to empower individuals or groups should be designed and implemented by working closely with those to be empowered. This can happen by sharing power – a hard thing to imagine by those ready to offer millions of dollars and those with degrees, certificates and years of experience on their resumes. Perhaps the uneducated, jobless and, in some cases even homeless, hungry, and inexperienced, can be trusted to inform well educated, tested and trusted experts. In case power-sharing is not feasible in the current development models working on a deficit approach towards deprived beneficiaries, then at least the thoughtless use of the term ‘empowerment’ should be stopped.

However, this constructive critique and an invitation to reflect on buzz words should not mean abandoning ‘empowerment’ as an ideal. The words we use to describe our work determine how we perceive our role and responsibilities in the work we do. Therefore, this call for review and reflection is an attempt to put the gobbledygook of the development sector in perspective. It is especially critical in the context where, despite claiming to be non-profit entities, some international NGOs vie for donor funds and set aside a huge proportion of funds for international staff and consultancy contracts to inform, design, and evaluate empowerment initiatives. Instead of making judicious use of taxpayers’ money from donor countries, and developing agency among the ‘to-be-empowered’ beneficiaries, these organisations rely on gobbledygook while setting aside a hefty proportion of funds to maintain their costly home and country offices and staff.

Programmes with an ‘empowerment’ agenda should be about creating spaces and forums for groups to take control of the processes within the programme. This is how they can practice and be prepared to steer their own life trajectories instead of just being recipients of trainings or mentoring activities of empowerment initiatives. The targets for such programmes should not just be the number of beneficiaries trained, or those with employment contracts for unfair job arrangements. Organisations that hold custody of millions of dollars and the services of a multitude of international experts should do better than this and use meaningful measures to demonstrate how empowered their project beneficiaries have become as a result of their efforts.

There are examples of promising practices such as an initiative of the Rural Support Programme Network (RSPN) and UK Aid’s Alif Ailaan for collaboration to create a parent alliance for accountability in the public education system. These partners presented the results of their activity as the count of messages sent by parents regarding various categories of issues in schools and actions taken by the education department in response. This is at least how ‘empowerment’ or ‘inspiring’ should be counted and presented.

The practice of community development set by the Aga Khan Rural Support Program, and scaled up by national and provincial rural support programmes, has led to spaces, forums and structures which can be utilised for any ‘empowerment’ initiatives in the country. Scaffolding of these local models can provide deeper reach and sustainable results in comparison to ideas and ideals created in snowy world capitals and parachuted into exotic warmer climates.

Foreign aid is a gift from the people – and especially taxpayers – of donor countries for the betterment of the people of Pakistan. The government of Pakistan and the governments of donor countries, represented by their aid departments, are the custodians of this gift and should ensure that it reaches real people for some meaningful change in their lives. To this end, they should work together on how to design accountability so as to translate intention into actions that lead to tangible betterment. More importantly, they will have to work with local communities and organisations along with international organisations to design development initiatives.

Empowerment is not just a state of mind; rather it is behaviour that exhibits itself in actions taken. Therefore, interventions with claims to empowerment of any sort should only be acceptable where the resultant empowerment is demonstrated through actions taken by ‘the empowered’ individuals and groups.

The writer is a researcher.