Editing Empowerment (section)

==Process==
Empowerment is the process of obtaining basic opportunities for [[marginalized]] people, either directly by those people, or through the help of non-marginalized others who share their own access to these opportunities. It also includes actively thwarting attempts to deny those opportunities. Empowerment also includes encouraging, and developing the skills for, [[self-sufficiency]], with a focus on eliminating the future need for [[Charity (practice)|charity]] or welfare in the individuals of the group. This process can be difficult to start and to implement effectively.

===Strategy===
One empowerment strategy is to assist marginalized people to create their own [[nonprofit organization]], using the rationale that only the marginalized people, themselves, can know what their own people need most, and that control of the organization by outsiders can actually help to further entrench marginalization. Charitable organizations lead from outside of the community, for example, can disempower the community by entrenching a dependence charity or welfare. A nonprofit organization can target strategies that cause structural changes, reducing the need for ongoing dependence. [[Red Cross]], for example, can focus on improving the health of indigenous people, but does not have authority in its charter to install water-delivery and purification systems, even though the lack of such a system profoundly, directly and negatively impacts health. A nonprofit composed of the indigenous people, however, could ensure their own organization does have such authority and could set their own agendas, make their own plans, seek the needed resources, do as much of the work as they can, and take responsibility – and credit – for the success of their projects (or the consequences, should they fail).

The process of which enables individuals/groups to fully access personal or collective power, authority and influence, and to employ that strength when engaging with other people, institutions or society. In other words, "Empowerment is not giving people power, people already have plenty of power, in the wealth of their knowledge and motivation, to do their jobs magnificently. We define empowerment as letting this power out."<ref name=blanchard/>  It encourages people to gain the skills and knowledge that will allow them to overcome obstacles in life or work environment and ultimately, help them develop within themselves or in the society.

To empower a female "...sounds as though we are dismissing or ignoring males, but the truth is, both genders desperately need to be equally empowered."<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.ccpa-accp.ca/blog/?p=2273|title=Encouraging and Empowering Girls - Canadian Counselling and Psychotherapy Association|date=13 July 2012|website=Ccpa-accp.ca|access-date=30 October 2017}}</ref>  Empowerment occurs through improvement of conditions, standards, events, and a global perspective of life.

===Criticism===
Before there can be the finding that a particular group requires empowerment and that therefore their self-esteem needs to be consolidated on the basis of awareness of their strengths, there needs to be a deficit diagnosis usually carried out by experts assessing the problems of this group. The fundamental asymmetry of the relationship between experts and clients is usually not questioned by empowerment processes. It also needs to be regarded critically, in how far the empowerment approach is really applicable to all patients/clients. It is particularly questionable whether [mentally ill] people in acute crisis situations are in a position to make their own decisions. According to Albert Lenz, people behave primarily regressive in acute crisis situations and tend to leave the responsibility to professionals.<ref>Albert Lenz: ''Empowerment und Ressourcenaktivierung – Perspektiven für die psychosoziale Praxis.''</ref> It must be assumed, therefore, that the implementation of the empowerment concept requires a minimum level of communication and reflectivity of the persons involved.

Another criticism is that empowerment implies that the drive for change comes from an external person. For example, in healthcare, a patient being encouraged by their doctor to track their symptoms and adjust their medication accordingly would be empowerment, where as a patient deciding on their own that they wanted to improve their medication regimen and thus started tracking would be an example of '''self-empowerment'''. A recently coined term, self-empowerment "describes patients’ and informal caregivers’ power to perform activities that are not mandated by health care and to take control over their own lives and self-management with increased self-efficacy and confidence".<ref>{{cite book |last1=Scott Duncan |first1=Therese |title=Patients' self-empowerment : patients and informal caregivers taking the lead |date=2023 |publisher=Karolinska Institutet |isbn=978-91-8016-891-5 |url=https://openarchive.ki.se/xmlui/handle/10616/48476 |access-date=5 February 2024}}</ref>