Empowerment practice explored...

Like my colleague Ed Jezierski, I want to share my concern for the people in Myanmar. I just spoke with a Burmese colleague in Bangkok who told me her family in Yangon is fortunately safe and unharmed. She described the damage in downtown Yangon as largely to trees and satellites on top of buildings. Electricity has been cut off but some people have generators.

Today I continue to explore the elements of effective community-based practice. My previous post was on the positive model Betty Makoni exemplifies for how to address serious social challenges, like domestic violence and rape. Her Girl Child Network employs true empowerment practice. This program, based on a network of girls' clubs, fosters the seeds of strength within the girls in the programs and encourages them to lead and effect change.

Empowerment practice is an overused word for those of us in the social work field. Everyone wants to engage in empowerment practice. One way to begin is to use a method described in an earlier post called asset mapping, which is also nicely described in the Social Design Notes. Another useful perspective is described as risk and protective factors.

Most of us know about risk factors - a history of breast cancer can be a risk factor for developing breast cancer. In infectious disease, poverty and malnutrition can be a particularly pernicious risk factors. According to the Global Health Council, "poverty not only characterizes the circumstances in which infectious diseases thrive, but the cycle of poverty is exacerbated by lost productivity, missed educational opportunities, and high health-care costs for the affected and their families."

Fortunately, poverty alone does not tell the whole story. Even in the midst of significant stressors, some people have positive outcomes. Protective factors - those factors that contribute to resiliency - are one place to look.

One of the early innovators of the term protective factors is developmental psychologist Emmy Werner, who did a groundbreaking longitudinal study on all of the children born in one year in Kauai, Hawaii. What was surprising about her work is that many of these children who were born into high risk households (substance abuse, etc) had successful outcomes. She found that 'protective factors' distinguished these resilient children. One of the most important protective factors was having a strong relationship with a nonparent caretaker or a community organization like the YMCA.

Social interventions (such as Big Brother/Big Sister) mimic and foster these protective factors. What intrigues me about this study is not just the resiliency research, but what they found to aid resilience -- social support and encouragement.

When we look at infectious disease in Southeast Asia for our Mekong Collaboration Program, we need to look not just at risk factors, but also at resiliency or protective factors: what are those qualities that make a community, village or family more likely to resist and respond to infectious disease outbreaks? Ultimately, the social and economic development of communities will be more important than fostering any single resiliency factors. In the meantime, stronger social networks strengthened by collaboration technology may help communities and public health officials respond more quickly and effectively.