Chapter 2: Empowerment and Systems Change

When the road to hell is paved by saviours and their good intentions.

The predominant approach to empowerment often assumes the groups you are helping are powerless.

Empowering is the most overused term in advocacy where privileged people try to ‘uplift’ the less privileged people they want to fix. The thrill that comes with feeling you have helped a less fortunate being is unmatched when this word is used. While positioning the person desiring to ‘help’ as an altruist, the saviour approach infantilizes and takes away the choice, and voice of any one person or group assuming they are not capable physically, mentally or emotionally to know what is good for them. Someone with more power, money and privilege must inherently have the skills to help their poor little friend.

Common phrases you might hear in reference to this approach to empowerment:

• Being the voice for the voiceless.

• Helping those in need.

• I am acting from my parental instinct to help you/them.

What ends up happening is the person saving often gets more out of the interaction, than the person who needs help.

Power is constructed based on our relationships to each other. The more we work to disrupt the power imbalances between ourselves and the persons we seek to heal alongside, the more empowerment we can all share. We eventually no longer need to ‘save’ or ‘speak on behalf of’ instead we choose to work alongside, and speak with the people asking for help.

Someone who empowers like a do-good-judy, is the quiet engine in the background humming to help the show go on. You are the workhorse using your power to push forward change. You are not the idea-generator, the face or even the spokesperson.

You are not using your power to gain more control over other people.

There is actually no empowerment in the saviour-complex infused empowerment language. Everyone loses. The people doing the ‘empowering’ stay in the dark of ignorance as the now ‘empowered’ are often left high and dry once their thrill of helping wares off. The people using a saviour complex rob themselves of genuine human connection, as they are not actually understanding what the humans they are trying to help need.

We must reclaim the word empowerment as a transaction between two parties, where one becomes disposed at the end of it.

We must adopt an approach that dismantles, disrupt and ultimately improves everyone’s well-being by working together.

Listen to Sarah Jacknife and I discuss empowerment in the accompanying podcast to this chapter. Link below!