SDC Experience and Practice on Empowerment in Latin America

Empowerment Makes a Mark! Orientations for the Empowerment of Local Cooperation Actors A Publication by SDC’s Latin America Division, 2009, in Spanish

This document permits SDC and its partners in Latin America to better internalise the concept of “empowerment“, which has guided the strategy of SDC‘s Latin America Division over the past 5 years, to verify the results of the strategic orientation and propose elements that help, in the practice of development cooperation, to consolidate empowerment as a way to ensure the sustainability and generalisation of results. This document is the result of a process of analysis and sharing carried out in SDC’s 4 priority countries in Latin America: Nicaragua, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia. The method used focuses on local and development cooperation actors’ perceptions of changes. Analyses in each country were conducted by local specialists in 2002 and in 2007. The results of these studies reflect no only the hoped-for effects of the projects, but also the deeper effects on social relations and new ways of overcoming challenges. The exchange between SDC and its partners contributed to expanding and making more concrete the orientations towards empowerment of local actors in Swiss cooperation with Latin America.

El empoderamiento deja sus huellas marzo 2009 Download (PDF, 675 KB): [es]

 

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ASOCAM's New Web Portal: Empowerment Practices

ASOCAM is a Latin American regional platform that facilitates forums for exchange on key issues of rural development. From 2005 to 2007, ASOCAM facilitated a process of sharing experiences and good practices about empowerment. This process involved participants from 27 social organizations, development agencies and public institutions in Latin America. A seminar on the topic was organized, for which experiences were systematized in five countries and through which orientations for improving practices were collectively generated.

The results of this process are now shared throughASOCAM's new web portal "Empowerment Practices." This specialized web portal aims to provide advice and guidance for development activities in contributing to creating a favorable environment for individuals and their organizations to achieve social empowerment in the present and future. From a reflection on concepts and approaches, the issue has been addressed through three dimensions: social, political and economic. In addition,an emphasis is placed on the relationships between the different dimensions of empowerment. For each of these dimensions, indicators for monitoring are proposed. For a summary of the portal's contents in English, please see below (an English version of the portal will be launched in March 2009). To view the full contents of "Empowerment Practices" in Spanish, please visit: www.empoderamiento.info.

Social Empowerment Social empowerment is a multidimensional process that includes the person, couple, family, group, community, social organization, public and private institutions, the system of networks and alliances underpinning the social fabric, andthe institutional and cultural context in relation to their social role and value.
	Strategies for implementing social empowerment include: Personal and cultural recognition Strengthening of organisations Social participatory management
Political Empowerment Political empowerment aims to transform exclusionary power relations, so that social groups, in a democratic and equitable way, take decisions concerning the improvement of their quality of life. The articulation of strategies forpolitical empowerment involves four interrelated processes: Innovation in institutional and legal frameworks Public policy changes Development of information and communication flows Building alliances and networks with other actors
The levels of political empowerment:	Strategies for making political empowerment operative include: Strengthening citizenship Sensitization and information Organisational development Accountability Building a common agenda Political will Participatory planning Joint management
Economic Empowerment Economic empowerment is a process aimed at developing skills and increasing opportunities for small rural or urban producers to improve their quality of life and access to factors of production and services in order to enhance their competitiveness and integration into the market as a source of increased revenue and generation of productive employment. A process for the economic empowerment of a popular organisation could proceed as follows Identification of the potential of small producers in a given territory Development of the business idea or economic enterprise Analysis of market opportunities Feasibility analysis: social, technical, financial, environmental Organization and strengthening of the company Analysis of value chains Strategic plan and business plan Capacity building: business, production, marketing, processing, and socio-organizational Implementation of the economic enterprise Support services: technological innovations, inputs, financial, information Control, monitoring, measurement and evaluation
The Relationship Between the Three Dimensions The diagram below shows the relationships and complementarities between the three dimensions of empowerment:
Further information, including a series of indicators for monitoring empowerment and anvirtual library, are available at the webportal www.empoderamiento.info For more information on the ASOCAM webplatform, please visit www.asocam.org. For more information on SDC's activities in South America, please see the SDC website. If you have an experience of working with empowerment approaches that you'd like to share, or if you have comments about the information presented here, please get in touch!