A.1. Social Empowerment

• Social empowerment is about cultivating autonomy and self-confidence, and acting together to transform social structures that perpetuate poverty and exclusion.
• Individual empowerment is influenced by individual assets like land, house, and savings along with social factors like health and education. Also, concepts of choice, liberty, agency, capacity, contribution, self-sufficiency and increased resources are all crucial to societal empowerment.
• Social empowerment has both individual and community aspects related to it. Individual factors like self-esteem. Self-confidence, imagination, and aspirations all influence social fulfilment. People’s collective assets and capabilities such as voice, organization, representation and identity also sway the social responsibility.
• It is important that socially and economically backward classes of people get involved in local associations and inter-community cooperation mechanisms can contribute to social empowerment by improving their skills, knowledge, and self-perception.
• One such example is the formation of farming cooperatives to empower the agrarian class. It helps to organize economic aid through cooperative banks or microfinance groups.
• It is also important to understand that associational life at the local level takes place within the informal sphere, such as religious organizations, traditional and customary institutions, and informal community-based groups. Such groups have more reach into peoples’ lives.
• The phrase social empowerment is also linked with gender equality. The role of women and women’s organizations is important in empowering women and building an inclusive society.
• The human being is seen as a part of society, and change is considered impossible unless social structures related to political power are changed. Individual and structural transformation is closely associated with the individual’s inner life shapes, and social environment, and that environment, in turn, exerts a deep influence on one’s well-being.
• The ability to recognize the root causes of inequality is decisive to the empowerment of populations to become agents of social transformation. Social empowerment leads to social transformation, and it involves the ability to identify the forces to recognize the drivers of social injustice and eliminate such practices.
• To eliminate social injustices, the people need to form groups and raise their voices. And throughout history, many such groups have been formed which gave rise to multiple ideologies.

[Image: Areas of Social Women Empowerment]