Genesis - Update 6: Empowerment

Journal prompt: Is empowerment easy? Why or why not?

These questions are making me laugh. Um, no, I don’t think empowerment is easy. In order to empower a person you’re going to have to work with people’s cultural learning curves. People are complex and they come with baggage and habits and traditions and are from different families, different religions/ideologies and principles…these are just some things that come to mind as challenges development agents face when working to empower individuals and communities. It is not easy. It takes an understanding of the community’s culture, rapport with them, biblical knowledge and understanding, and patience to properly teach the people and monitor their ability to do for themselves what they couldn’t do for themselves before.