Empowerment

Empowerment at the heart of our current struggles

Empowerment is influenced by feminism and by movements to emancipate minorities. It has its roots in the 1970s and is inspired by the thinking of Paolo Freire. Since then, empowerment has embodied powerful criticisms of injustice and social inequality.

Empowerment at Médecins du Monde

For Médecins du Monde, “empowerment” is both a process and a goal by which individuals and groups of individuals develop their power to act and transform their environment and the circumstances of their lives.

This process is based on:

• Participation by individuals and communities in actions that concern them;
• Identification and questioning of relations of power and domination, to strengthen people’s empowerment in their choices and social and health journeys.

Fostering empowerment requires a shared set of values and approaches to professional practices at both an individual and organizational level.

Empowerment and health

The Ottawa Charter

In 1986, the concept of empowerment was used by the World Health Organization in its famous Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion:

“Health promotion works through concrete and effective community action in setting priorities, making decisions, planning strategies and implementing them to achieve better health. At the heart of this process is the empowerment of communities, their ownership and control of their own endeavours and destinies. ”

With the Ottawa Charter, empowerment is recognized as an essential approach in health projects, directly linked with the participation of those concerned and with community health experiences.

Community health

We believe that each individual should be able to actively participate in their own health. This is why we adopt a community health approach in our actions.

We know that getting people involved in projects that affect them makes our actions more impactful:

• Developing participatory actions with the community ensures people’s needs are better addressed.
• People accept them better.
• It is easier to keep the actions going when the project is over.

We work with communities at all stages of the projects we implement.

Our actions

To promote empowerment in our projects and the participation of the people and communities we work with, we use and often combine many strategies, actions, and methods.

People must have access to reliable, comprehensive, and relevant information to make informed choices about their health and gain autonomy in their social and healthcare journey. For this reason, our methods focus on the development of health education. They are reliant on the communities we work with, the context, the project, and our objectives.

Collective initiatives

Backing and support for collective initiatives and community mobilization are an effective and concrete means of involving people in activities. They also build on existing community resources and address the needs people have expressed.

In the same vein, Médecins du Monde supports people’s initiatives and desires to organize themselves, whether as a formal or informal collective. The desire to shift from being a group of people who share the same problem or goal to a formally organized group, in which roles and objectives have been clarified and established, represents a real opportunity to develop a sustainable community and empowerment approach.

Partnership relations

At Médecins du Monde, we strive to promote quality partnerships that are more equitable, transparent, and based on a shared desire to improve rights and access to prevention and care, where there is room for everyone.

Developing such partnerships with local and community stakeholders represents particularly strategic empowerment opportunities:

• Through partnerships, the sharing of decisions and powers with community stakeholders can be organized genuinely and fairly.
• Partnerships can sustainably strengthen stakeholders.
• The causes and struggles of communities are amplified through partnerships.

Community advocacy

We view support for people and communities in developing their advocacy as an emancipatory and sustainable means of social transformation that’s part of an empowerment approach. By supporting communities in their political fight for access to rights and healthcare rather than fighting for them, we build up their capacity and legitimacy.

Health democracy

Médecins du Monde supports participation by individuals and communities in designing public policies that concern them. By promoting health democracy, we advocate for the participation and inclusion of these people in the spaces for consultation and decision-making.