Empowerment is the degree of autonomy and self-determination in people and in communities. This enable them to representing the interests in the responsible and self-determined manner. It is also refer to the action which the process of self-empowerment and also provide professional support to the people. This results in overcoming the sense of powerlessness and also allow individual to recognize themselves and use the resources in optimum manner. Empowerment play an important role in discoursing and promoting civic engagement (Cicognani, et al., 2020). However, community empowerment is considered the approach which allow community people to maintain control over the factors and aspects so that they can develop effective decisions for shaping the lives. The empowerment of community leads in increasing the involvement and participation of community by understanding the social and political legislations. Furthermore, the essay describes the role of empowerment in community development and essay also examine the encouragement of community members in participation process (Cislaghi, et al., 2019).
Empowerment play an important role in increasing the involvement and participation of communities, as through this community members increase their re-negotiating power so that they can gain more control. As power us become the central concept which focuses on empowering the community and promote the health of community members (Edwards, 2019). Furthermore, empowerment leads in providing support towards community development because it supports in addressing the social, cultural and political determinants. The empowerment also increasing the recognition and power so that individual can meet the needs at both global and local levels. As communication also become important to ensure that it can encourage community empowerment. Therefore, it is estimated that community development is done through focusing on the participatory approach so that community people can gain their knowledge and critical skills to make decisions (Firdaus and Ansori, 2019).
In Australia, empowerment is increased through involving the people in the engagement activities by developing the campaign, therefore, it is important in community development because now people can gets the freedom to act and develop the sense of belongingness. It leads in gaining the confidence and initiate the action of the community at the national level so that it can build social cohesion. Furthermore, through empowerment, community people build various skills which includes service skills, leadership skills and management skills so that it can raise partnership and involvement (Haldane, et al., 2019). The other importance of the empowerment is that it supports in improving the societal problem and include the young group, community council and association so that it can develop the community capacity. Moreover, empowered individual can allow the people to influence their direction and involve in the program so that it can gain progression. The empowerment also allow individual to contribute towards in the capacity building so that it can it can gain positively in involving in empowerment process (Hidayat and Syahid, 2019).
As the empowerment is important for the long term growth of the community because it increase the autonomy of the individual so that one can increase their interest and become authorized to perform the activities. Furthermore, empowerment is also important for the youth because it increase their skills and abilities to understand their rights by getting education and by involving in various counselling sessions (Hidayat and Syahid, 2019). Moreover, it also contribute towards in reduction of the poverty by increasing the employment and through involving in each and every activity in the workforce so that it can results in making better decisions. The empowerment leads in raising the community development because it broaden their networks by meeting with the new influential people. As the empowered community results in influencing their social and economic aspects because it helps the community in seeking their rights. In addition to this it results in increasing the collectiveness and at the same time acquiring the sense of worthiness.
As empowerment leads in developing the sense of ownership and enable community people to increase their effectiveness, in addition to this through empowerment the short-term and long-term goals can be accomplished which includes in the short-term the empowerment supports in contributing towards better communication. As it also leads in inspiring he change by address the loneliness and addressing other service problems (Ismail and Kumar, 2019). The long term goals includes serving to the public services and reducing the societal challenges without affecting them at the community level. Moreover, it is demonstrate that empowerment leads in improving the support, employability and also raise independence. Furthermore, the discussion is describing the reasons for which it is considered important for the community people to participate in the process.
The community people has to participate in the process because it leads in developing the relationships among the community members. As it leads in accessing towards the value and raise the contribution to give meaning to the activities and develop the functional capabilities so that members can contribute completely (Ogamba, 2019). Moreover, it leads in raising visibility and develop the capability of the community members to determine the challenges which affects the decisions and lives of the people. The involvement in the process allow the members to improve their support and create the value so that it can maintain betterment to get long term growth and development. The encouragement of community members to participate in the activities is important because it increase the services demand and increase the abilities of the community members to perform the activities by following their rights. The other reasons which demonstrate that community engagement is important is that it leads in enhancing the client retention, improve the abilities of manager to reduce the human resource issues by providing provision of care (Haldane, et al., 2019).
As this leads in increasing the stronger link among the facilities and communities, moreover, through involving the community member in the process it leads in improving the outcomes by maintaining the equality and reaching the underserved populations. According to Ismail and Kumar, it is demonstrate that by increasing the participation of the community people through promoting the engagement and accessing new skills and capabilities (Ismail and Kumar, 2019). Furthermore, the members gets new opportunities in teaching by the advancement in the knowledge. There is positive impact of community members engagement in the decision making because it allowing the members to move from various stages which includes informing, consulting, involving, collaborating and empowering (Ogamba, 2019). The engagement leads in improving the understanding of the consumes about the health issues, increasing the community satisfaction, becoming more responsive and developing towards getting better services and raising the greater accountability towards the public funds. Therefore, it is important to involve the community members in decision making and in the development of process.
From the above, it is concluded that empowerment is important for community development because it leads in raising communication and develop the re-negotiating power of the community members. The empowerment allow community members to involve in the campaign so that they can gain awareness regarding their rights and responsibilities. As it is important for community members to improve the societal problem. Furthermore, community people has to participate the process for building relationships, resolving the issues and increase the engagement to focuses more on decision making. Moreover, it make community people responsive, increasing accountability and make the member accountable.
References
Cicognani, E., Albanesi, C., Valletta, L. and Prati, G. (2020) Quality of collaboration within health promotion partnerships: Impact on sense of community, empowerment, and perceived projects’ outcomes. Journal of Community Psychology, 48(2), pp.323-336. Retrieved From: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/jcop.22254#:~:text=Using%20Bayesian%20structural%20equation%20modeling,health%E2%80%90promoting%20community%20and%20empowerment.
Cislaghi, B., Denny, E.K., Cissé, M., Gueye, P., Shrestha, B., Shrestha, P.N., Ferguson, G., Hughes, C. and Clark, C.J. (2019) Changing social norms: the importance of “organized diffusion” for scaling up community health promotion and women empowerment interventions. Prevention Science, 20(6), pp.936-946. Retrieved from: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11121-019-00998-3.
Edwards Jr, D.B. (2019) Shifting the perspective on community-based management of education: From systems theory to social capital and community empowerment. International Journal of Educational Development, 64, pp.17-26. Retrieved from: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0738059318304255.
Firdaus, N.M. and Ansori, A. (2019) Optimizing Management of Early Childhood Education in Community Empowerment. Journal of Nonformal Education, 5(1), pp.89-96. Retrieved from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/336851271_Optimizing_Management_of_Early_Childhood_Education_in_Community_Empowerment.
Haldane, V., Chuah, F.L., Srivastava, A., Singh, S.R., Koh, G.C., Seng, C.K. and Legido-Quigley, H. (2019) Community participation in health services development, implementation, and evaluation: A systematic review of empowerment, health, community, and process outcomes. PloS one, 14(5), pp. 34-38. Retrieved from: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31075120/.
Hidayat, D. and Syahid, A. (2019) Local Potential Development (Local Genius) in Community Empowerment. Journal of Nonformal Education, 5(1), pp.1-14. Retrieved from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/336849778_Local_Potential_Development_Local_Genius_in_Community_Empowerment.
Ismail, A. and Kumar, N. (2019) Empowerment on the margins: The online experiences of community health workers. In Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 6(6), pp. 1-15. Retrieved from: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3290605.3300329.
Ogamba, I.K. (2019) Millennials empowerment: youth entrepreneurship for sustainable development. World Journal of Entrepreneurship, Management and Sustainable Development, 3(5), pp. 78-83. Retrieved from: https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/WJEMSD-05-2018-0048/full/html.
