Community empowerment stories
Story 1: getting the whole story
Chris, a Social Exclusion Officer working for a local authority had been struggling to see how his role fitted – and complemented – the community education department who saw themselves as the main protagonist of ‘community empowerment’. Chris attended one of our training courses where we introduced participants to the 5 Community Empowerment Dimensions and showed how they can help people to understand what community empowerment is. For Chris, this was a major break-through – he could see that the Community Education department were concerned with the ‘confident’ dimension but had no focus on – or remit for – the other 4 dimensions, and yet these were definitely part of his role. Chris was able to start up discussions with colleagues in Community Education about how they could work together to ensure they took an empowering approach to their work.
Story 2: more or less empowering
During facilitated sessions with Dudley Community Engagement Working Group, we revisited the Ladder of Participation and developed a matrix for members of the Working Group to consider 5 different levels of engagement:
- giving information
- consultation
- deciding together
- acting together
- supporting communities
Adding the 5 community empowerment dimensions into the mix, it was possible to illustrate how, at each of the 5 levels, there are different ways to approach this engagement – some of which are more empowering than others. This matrix was later taken up by Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council to use in their community engagement toolkit.
Story 3: our own journey
It was while we were undertaking research with community networks in Dudley to design – and refine – a framework which they could use to plot and increase their influence on public agencies, that it became glaringly apparent to us that there was no point in focusing solely on ‘developing;’ communities which are empowered and empowering, if the agencies they are trying to connect with are shutting them out and behaving in disempowering ways. This stark realisation kick started the research which has led to the development of the echo framework – which has a focus on assessing and increasing public agencies’ openness to influence, that is – how empowered and empowering they are.