A Critical Examination of an Urban-Based Youth Empowerment Strategy: The Teen Empowerment Program

ABSTRACT

Youths from marginalized and disenfranchised communities can be empowered to advocate for social justice through civic engagement and sociopolitical action. Examining youth empowerment programs, using critical social theory, builds upon our understanding of sociopolitical systems and oppression and provides a lens to examine mechanisms of change while applying theory to practice. Jennings, Parra-Medina, Messias, and McLoughlin (2006 Jennings, L. B., Parra-Medina, D. M., Messias, D. K. H. and McLoughlin, K. 2006. Toward a critical social theory of youth empowerment. Journal of Community Practice, 14: 31–55. [Taylor & Francis Online] , [Google Scholar]) have identified six dimensions of critical youth empowerment programs, which provide a framework for examining youth empowerment programs. This article presents the Teen Empowerment program, as implemented with high-risk youths in urban communities, and examines it along these six dimensions and provides a model for how to critically examine youth empowerment programs using this framework.     

Rethinking Empowerment

Empowerment is one of the most frequently invoked concepts in social work theory and practice of the 1980s. In the United States, social workers representing diverse practice methods and working with highly varied populations articulate a commitment to empowerment, one that they have inherited from both the political movements of the 1960s and the much older mutual aid tradition. Though the concept of empowerment succeeds in constituting a mission for social work congruent with the historic and contemporary values of the profession, re-examination and clarification of this important notion is necessary to prevent conceptual confusion and an unintended paternalism from intruding on the relationship of social workers and their clients.     

Parent Education: Empowerment or Control?

This article describes the recent growth in interest in both government circles and elsewhere in the subject of education for parenthood. A brief history of this emerging area of interest is provided, and the article goes on to consider the range of interests involved, reflecting on their possible motivations. The question of ‘who benefits?’ is important, it is argued. The article concludes that despite widespread claims of considerable success by the proponents of such programmes, a greater degree of rigour is needed in assessing their achievements so far.     

Defining Women's Global Political Empowerment: Theories and Evidence

Although women's access to political power has increased tremendously, nowhere are women equal to men in their influence over and exercise of political authority. Scholarship on women's political empowerment is uneven and incomplete. This article interrogates ‘women's political empowerment’, considering its definition, measurement, and application. First, we establish that academics and practitioners have not articulated a clear definition of women's political empowerment. To fill this gap, we put forward a new definition that conceptualizes women's political empowerment as a transformative process. We then review existing social science literature on women's political empowerment. We argue that scholars must expand research to develop a broader vision of women's political empowerment and develop measures that capture this breadth.     

Home Computers and Family Empowerment

No abstract available for this article.     

Tailoring Organizational Characteristics for Empowerment

ABSTRACT

Empowerment is an important value orientation and intervention approach in social work and other disciplines. Viewed from an ecological perspective, a good fit between organizational characteristics and the life circumstances of individuals should provide empowerment benefits. By studying interaction effects of material resources and organizational characteristics on empowerment, this research sought to extend understanding of empowerment dynamics in community organizations. Using hierarchical regression analyses to investigate socio-economic status (SES) in a moderator model, findings of the study demonstrated that, among a diverse group of participants in two different faith-based community organizations, perceptions of organizational characteristics were more strongly related to empowerment for participants of lower SES. A substantive implication of the study is that community practitioners should attend to the fit between specific organizational processes and economic circumstances of community based organization participants. Strategies weighted toward attention to relationships among members linked to availability of and participation in a variety of organizational roles may be more salient for empowerment of the disadvantaged. Our findings are consistent with an ecological orientation to empowerment, and they add further support to the importance of ecological specificity in empowerment theory.     

城市交通的智慧赋能

在交通领域以自动驾驶为代表的新技术潮流中,也许我们需要思考一些更加深刻的问题:不仅是通过技术应用解决交通行业内紧迫的问题,还包括通过系统变革解决行业在社会生态中面临的问题,乃至通过行业所形成的核心功能优势推动社会的变革. 正因为如此,局限于物理空间中的智能交通,需要进化为在物理-信息-社会三元空间中的智慧交通.有别于在...     

Language,Identity and Empowerment

Abstract

This article addresses the relationship between language and identity and language and power. Language is viewed as an important vehicle through which empowerment can occur in society and through which social workers can contribute to the empowerment of dual language individuals and communities. Language suppression is viewed through the framework of bilinguaphobia, a term coined by Faltis and Coulter in 2004. Because of the long and unique history of Spanish in Southwestern communities, the authors suggest that true empowerment must overcome the prevalent discourse of fear of bilingualism. This article suggests that the present status and identity of Latinos in the Southwestern United States would be enhanced and affirmed by the healthy co-existence of two tongues and two cultural frameworks and that social workers should recognize and advocate for the power of bilingual discourses.     

Computer Diffusion and Worker Empowerment

Abstract

Much anecdotal material describes various human impacts of computer adoption within the social work profession, however, there is scant research which confirms or challenges these assumptions. This article describes a study which investigates the diffusion of computers into the social work profession in terms of empowerment as an individual outcome for workers. A questionnaire returned by 520 social workers provided data on organizational computer diffusion, organizational centralization, and the Social Worker Empowerment Scale. Workers in organizations where computer diffusion was more advanced, and those in more decentralized decisionmaking environments were found to be more empowered.     

Financial Literacy: Building Economic Empowerment with Survivors of Violence

The purpose of this paper is to outline key constructs including financial literacy, economic self-efficacy, economic self-sufficiency, and economic empowerment, and then present findings from an exploratory study that sought to understand the relationship among these variables in a sample of abused women. The results revealed positive and significant relationships between financial literacy with economic empowerment, economic self-efficacy and economic-self sufficiency. Results also indicated that financial literacy, race, and economic self-sufficiency were significant predictors of economic empowerment. By focusing this research on abused women, it is our intention to raise awareness about the importance of financial literacy curricula with advocates, policy-makers and researchers, so more focus can be given to economically empowering IPV survivors.     

Negotiating Risk and Promoting Empowerment through Rap Music: Development of a Measure to Capture Risk and Empowerment Pathways to Change

The purpose of this study was to report on the development and construction of the Individual and Community Empowerment (ICE) inventory, a measure seeking to capture the specific pathways by which either risk-enhancing impacts or empowering impacts of rap music manifest. Data were analyzed via structural equation modeling from a convenience sample of 128 high school and college students. Results found that respondents elicited (1) empowering themes that related to them individually and to the broader community and (2) high-risk themes that may promote risky health behaviors. Implications about research and practice relevance of the ICE inventory are discussed.     

Empowerment and long-living women: return to the rejected body

Adhering to a feminist empowerment model, this article began as an attempt to elicit the voices of long-living women on the subject of late life. My intent was to develop understandings that could be used to guide social work interventions. Half way into the project, I discovered that our models of empowerment do not quite “fit” the realities of advanced age. I argue that feminists need to develop a more body-sensitive and thus age-sensitive model of empowerment. Rather than power and powerlessness being understood as polar opposites, they could be seen a coexistent and interpenetrating. Seeing the interplay of power and vulnerability subverts the individualistic ethic of “successful aging” with its implied hostility toward aging bodies. As empowerment theory becomes “embodied,” disability and death lose their stigma and become acceptable and respectable human experiences.