Place comments on the Facebook page 'The Poor-Poor Divide'
I always feel the need to rinse my mouth out if ever I utter the word 'empowerment'. I really try hard not to use it, but when I do it's to question what people mean when they use it.
Power, like respect, is not given. It's earned. You can't 'create environments for empowerment', but you can create environments that are supportive of people to allow them to function without oppression.
You can acknowledge the powers that people already have, but that's not giving them anything except the respect which they are due.
If people want to take up what you have to offer (be it literacy, a voice, resources, services, training) that's fine. But they don't have to if they don't want to. Offering them such things is not necessarily giving them any more power than they want, unless they themselves see it as a route to something they themselves want.
To talk of 'empowerment' as though it can be isolated from complex evolving and interacting social environments is nuts.
People can be, and often are, very happy in environments outsiders may regard as oppressive. Sometimes they are not, but tolerate the situation for the benefits it brings them. And sometimes they want to change things but don't know how. It is in these latter situations that help is required, but making generalisations about categories or classes of people that need 'empowerment' without ensuring that all within that category or class really want change, is mere paternalism of the worst kind.
In the other essays on this site, the importance of recognising and adapting to such distinctions is explored in a variety of ways. For a focused approach the the word 'empowerment', start with the very short story on the page 'Participation and Empowerment'.
Tony Klouda