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Community Practice Skills: Local to Global Perspectives resources

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22 ■ COMMUNITY PRACTICE: PURPOSE AND KNOWLEDGE BASE liberties, po liti cal rights, and socioeconomic entitlements” (1994:45). In that work, Simon points to the many infl uences in developing and broadening the social work knowledge base for empowerment, including Gandhi, African In de pen- dence Movements, Freire in South America, the civil rights and the black power movements in the United States, liberation theology in South America, femi- nism, gay and lesbian liberation, and the disability rights movement. Richard Es- tes (1993) and Paul Hawken (2007) added worldwide indigenous movements and the all important movements toward environmental protection and restoration. People who have been working together toward empowerment often express their newly gained insight and collective effi cacy in song, art, and drama. Si Kahn (1994), songwriter, singer, and community or ga niz er, provided a manual, How People Get Power, to help organizers envision and carry out work that em- powered people in local communities. Successful community workers from various corners of the globe have effectively facilitated the incorporation of local music, poetry, drama, and other cultural expressions into community awareness and empowerment activities (Boal 2000; Chambers 1997; Couto and Guthrie 1999; Kleymeyer 1994; Slocum et al. 1995). VeneKlasen and Miller (2002) describe citizen empowerment as “a pro cess of learning and action that strengthens people’s self- esteem, analytical and or- ga niz ing skills, and po liti cal consciousness so they can gain a sense of their rights and join together to develop more demo cratic societies” (59). As commu- nity groups become empowered, they are better able to engage in planning, action, and evaluation of programs and projects that will improve the quality of life for all community members. Mea sur ing empowerment, evaluating how people become more engaged as social actors and how changes come about in the community, requires forethought and participation by community mem- bers to specify what the changes will look like. Brueggemann (2006) suggests that when social workers engage with people to develop empowerment they should aim to “help people break the bonds of external and internal oppression, raise consciousness, challenge perceptions, and stimulate refl ection” (488). Empowerment is an outcome we work toward and a pro cess that we work through as we describe the eight models of commu- nity practice in part II. CONCLUSIONS In this introductory chapter we have set forth our perspectives on the meaning of community along a local to global continuum. We introduced a strong focus for incorporating social justice and human rights in the work of community practice, including a discussion of the importance of eradicating poverty and of developing

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