WHAT IS AN EMPOWERMENT?

By : Andi Agus Mumang, S.KM

Empowerment is an effort made to empower the individual / group with the aim of guiding and develop their potential for creating an usefulness value and quality value. Empowerment is often done because it would be very helpful in activating the functionality and usability of an individual / group.

Each individual or group has a specific function and role in a community. each has the potential to give value based on the roles and functions performed. This potential to make a positive impression on the progress of a community. That potential is one thing that sometimes not everyone is able to vote and use it as a profitable thing. Thus, sometimes the potential  become to sink and make their owners feel not worth anything. This is an empowerment role to act. Individuals and groups must have a desire to be able to explore its potential. The effort to guide and develop this potential can be carried out within the scope of an individual or group. Thus, in terms of empowerment broadly divided into two, namely:

• Empowerment of the individual (individual) is the efforts in guiding and developing the potential by targeting individual / personal as targets for empowerment. This empowerment model is mostly done to build awareness of personal potention. for example, the empowerment of students who lack the confidence to perform discussion, stage fright and others. Such empowerment is usually done in the form of counseling or consultation.
• Empowerment of group is the effort in guiding and developing the potential by targetting group as a target. This empowerment model do to build awareness of the potential of the group. For example, family empowerment, community empowerment, and others. This such empowerment see a need in the plural.