How it feels to be disempowered
I have just been revisiting some notes from one of our echo sessions where we start by exploring the concept of ’empowerment’ so people get a grip on why it is important to work in empowering ways and what this means in practice, it gives everyone the chance to discuss their differing views of the term and come up with ways to explain it.
One way to do this is to turn it around and ask people to think about when they have felt disempowered – what did they feel like? The results can be quite powerful and, on this occasion the group said:
Unloved, excluded, helpless, over-looked, disenfranchised, outsider, low self-worth, silenced, worthless.
They took all of these words, added a few others and turned it into a powerful piece of poetry which they then fed back to the main group to express how it feels to be disempowered:
Have you ever felt helpless, with a low self-worth,a complete outsider, overlooked and excluded?
Organisational silence – they just won’t understand
I’m left feeling under-valued, worthless and unloved
Underneath all this, I am disenfranchised
I need to be heard
What a message to people working with communities, or employing people – or just communicating with people! Of course, we would counter this by suggesting the Community Empowerment Dimensions as a framework to turn this around.
1 Comment to How it feels to be disempowered
Leave a Reply
Site search
Blog archive by category
Blog archive by month
- March 2022
- September 2016
- March 2015
- November 2014
- July 2014
- June 2014
- April 2014
- November 2013
- August 2013
- July 2013
- June 2013
- May 2013
- April 2013
- March 2013
- February 2013
- January 2013
- November 2012
- October 2012
- September 2012
- August 2012
- July 2012
- May 2012
- April 2012
- December 2011
- August 2011
- May 2011
- April 2011
- March 2011
- January 2011
- September 2010
- June 2010
- April 2010
- March 2010
- August 2009
- June 2009
- October 2008
- August 2008
- July 2008
- June 2008
- April 2008
- July 2007
- November 2006
- August 2006
- July 2006
- June 2006
- April 2006
I am currently working on how to empower residents in care homes. I am developing a matrix of elder empowerment based on participatory research. This can be found on my blog. I’d be very interested to get some ideas. Thank you.