Reflections on Empowerment

Here is a link  http://www.iacdglobal.org/blog  to a blog on the International Association of Community Development website http://www.iacdglobal.org/   By Randy Adams, it presents a detailed definition of community empowerment using an acronym SPEAK standing for Skills, Practice, Experience, Attitude and Knowledge.  
I can't disagree with the detail and yet I find it uncomfortable.   I think it is because it's imbued with a feeling of paternalism or at least a very clinical approach to community development.   For me the important thing is to be clear about how a community worker makes a connection with a community, what they do to facilitate and provoke collective action, experiential learning and reflection, and how they use achievements, networks, relationships, and opportunities to build a development process to enable a community to exert meaningful influence over issues related to social justice and participative democracy.  
I'm in danger of being as wordy as the post I'm criticising...which is a good argument for speaking about actual practice as is encouraged by this week's task on the miniMOOC - so that will be my next post.

#SCEminiMOOC

Oldies on line

The trouble I'm finding with using Facebook, Twitter and even email and texting is that so many of my friends are so reluctant to expose themselves on line. Some say they are afraid (paranoid?) of who will find out all about them, some haven't picked up on on-line manners, maybe it's also Scottish reticence. Mind you there hasn't been a rush to the miniMOOC by the younger target audience. Do we just keep plugging away or are there some techniques we need to develop?    #SCEminiMOOC

First blog post

I'm learning to blog with the Empowering Communities MiniMOOC run by The Northern Alliance and the University of Aberdeen.
This is an exciting adventure into using social networking tools to support CPD.
Is anyone out there?    #SCEminiMOOC