CB BureauThe idea of Imagine is embodied in something called the Empowerment Workshop. It seeks to empower women in challenging life circumstances to envision and create new possibilities for their life, family and community through participation in the workshop.
The training programme, developed by David Gershon and Gail Straub, founders and co-directors of the Empowerment Institute”s School for Transformational Social Change, has been applied over the past 30 years in
numerous countries worldwide.
Specifically, the empowerment methodology helps individuals increase their self-knowledge so they can discover what is important to them; translate this knowledge into a workable vision; identify and transform the limiting beliefs that inevitably arise when creating something new; and adopt an actionable growth strategy to attain their goals.These empowerment tools then serve as part of an ongoing support system to enable further personal growth over time. Traditionally, the training is done over the course of four days, with the assistance of a trained empowerment facilitator and is adapted to the cultural context.
Since its inception in 1981, the Empowerment Institute has trained more than 3,000 empowerment facilitators, who have undergone rigorous instruction that includes didactic, experiential and practical training. These individuals have, in turn, used the empowerment methodology to train several hundred thousand people.
The most notable outcomes, as it pertains to this initiative, are from Empowerment Workshops conducted over the past five years in regions of the world where women are living under considerable stress and adversity, such
as Afghanistan, Darfur refugee camps, Rwanda, Malawi and South Africa.
The Imagine initiative is initially being rolled out in five sites internationally: Afghanistan, Sudan (Darfur), Nigeria, India, and South Africa. Partner organisations will help in selecting the women to attend the Empowerment Institute to be trained as Empowerment Workshop trainers.
The current partners include Women for Women International (in Afghanistan, Nigeria and Sudan); World Pulse (all five Imagine countries); Women”s Peace Collection (all five Imagine countries); Prosperity Foundation
(Afghanistan); Women for Afghan Women (Afghanistan); and Women Without Borders (all five Imagine countries).
Focus on execution is coupled with responsiveness to existing field realities and innovations. Imagine will leverage existing information technologies that will facilitate the documentation of changes in individual empowerment, quality of life, changes in wealth, education and health for all women who have undergone the empowerment facilitator training as well as workshop participants.
Imagine India
By Anita Shankar
Imagine India began with an idea, a small grant from Ram Jethmalani Foundation, New Delhi, and with a tremendous amount of enthusiasm to see what is possible. Having worked with colleagues in Pune for more than 10 years, I had several collaborators and friends to assist in preparing the venue, identifying the women, translating the materials and organising the activities.
However, together with the excitement and anticipation was apprehension about how these ideas and concepts of empowerment would be understood or actualised among this group of women from the urban slums of Pune. These women had already experienced a lifetime of challenges, very low income, early age of marriage, little formal education, gender discrimination, poor health, and violence or other abuse. My discussions with local social activists and community organisers who have worked with these populations for many years was enlightening-there was an understanding that catalysing human agency was a critical component of development, but how this could be accomplished within the existing four-day curriculum was more difficult to
comprehend. I, myself, had seen significant impact on people in the US, even with very disenfranchised populations, but it could be that the cultural context and life situation in the Indian slum would lead to something entirely different.
The response to the workshop by these women was overwhelming. More than 35 women came the first day, and at least 27 women on every subsequent day. Certainly, there were those who felt that it was too late for them to change their own lives, but the overwhelming majority of women found inspiration and excitement with the material. Given that the empowerment process requires significant inner reflection and thought, the extent to which the women understood and utilised the information was astounding.
We collected information from all the participants and documented their learnings from the workshop. Of the 25 women that participated through the bulk of the training, all experienced inner growth, with nearly half of these women experiencing transformational growth leading to significant changes in their relationships, work, or monetary situation during the course of the workshop. Surprisingly to me, the areas of greatest concern for these
women were relationship and love, followed by work and their own body. What is not conveyed in the data collected in the interviews was the excitement and enthusiasm that continued to build day after day in the workshop. Women who had never had the experience of speaking in front of a group were now clearly articulating their stories; women who were angry with their circumstances were now able to work through towards their visions. The women ended the workshop full of inspiration, accomplishment and gratitude for their experience. Below are some stories from the women in our group:
A young woman who had been struggling with how to earn additional money said she had the courage to ask the local baker if he needed someone to assist him in his shop and was offered a part-time job to begin right after the completion of the workshop. Another spoke about how she used to beat her son to get him to attend school. She tried another way that used kindness and love as a way to encourage her son, and she saw that he went to school without incident.
Another woman wondered what she could possibly dream about for herself. She remarked on the third day, ‘Everyday, you keep talking about thinking about what our dreams are, so I finally thought what it is that I wanted. I never got a chance to finish school or learn how to read and write well. So, I am thinking now that I can sit with my son once he returns from school and learn with him.’
Working with these women over the course of the workshop was a wonderful experience. They provided me with such inspiration of what is possible in the world and a greater conviction that supporting these women to be what they are fully capable of is exactly what is needed in the world. As mentioned by one of the participants in the workshop: ‘I am going to tell everyone I know about what I learned in this workshop. This information should be spread as far it as it can go.’
I totally agree.
Anita Shankar is a key international team member at Imagine, with responsibilities for field research, supervision and evaluation. She has served on the faculty of John Hopkins University and Bloomberg School of Public Health, and is co-founder, Center for Health and Human Development.