In relation to the overall history of the Bank, empowerment is a relatively new concept. However, it is a concept that has gained a strong foothold in the Bank's current work and will likely become stronger in the years to come.
The Empowerment Team recently conducted interviews with four senior Bank staff, each of whom indirectly oversees the Empowerment Community of Practice. The purpose of these interviews was to better understand their positions on the empowerment agenda and to gauge their perceptions on how the agenda has evolved and in what direction it's going. Each interviewee spoke about his or her understanding of empowerment on a theoretical level as well as ways to make that theory practical on the operational level.
The four interviewed staff members were: Gobind Nankani, Vice President of PREM; Ian Johnson, Vice President of ESSD; John Page, Director of PRMPR; and Judith Edstrom, Acting Director on behalf of Steen Jorgensen for SDV.
A common theme in each interview was the recognition that empowerment has irrefutable intrinsic value. Said Page, "It's something that everyone can agree on. Who can be against the idea that people should be empowered?" As well, Edstrom referred to empowerment as a term that "speaks to human rights and dignity." Johnson noted that an interesting aspect of empowerment is that it's "an end in itself and a means to an end."
Nankani focused many of his comments on the development effectiveness aspect of empowerment, however, he added, "where I think empowerment actually begins is recognizing the importance of each individual, who in the end is the primary concern when we talk about development and development outcomes."
Regardless of a basic conceptual belief in empowerment, the interviewees expressed that for the Bank's purposes, there also need to be clear linkages with poverty reduction as well as proven mechanisms where it can be applied in operational work.
Universally, there was agreement that more quantifiable information in terms of measurement would be useful. Page commented that although some areas of measurement are subjective and would be difficult to quantify, there is an important, quantitative branch in the Bank "who would like… evidence-based analysis that allows us to say that certain areas of work on the empowerment agenda would have high development payoffs."
The Empowerment Sourcebook was often mentioned as having given empowerment firm roots within the Bank. "Sometimes I think it is useful to disaggregate what empowerment is and that's why the Sourcebook is very useful – that's what it does," Edstrom remarked.
The interviewees felt that the Sourcebook gave task managers a solid set of guidelines to follow in project implementation. Page and Nankani noted that the Sourcebook offered numerous examples where elements of empowerment have been successfully applied in the past.
Nankani noted that adding an empowerment element to projects often requires only a slight change in perspective. He remarked, Bank staff can "tweak (projects) in many little ways to make them more empowerment oriented and the successes of this tweaking can be quite enormous."
He named a number of examples where the involvement of community members greatly enhanced development outcomes, including the well-known, primary education project in Uganda. In this case, information regarding the low percentage of aid that was reaching the intended primary school beneficiaries was made public. Nankani said "this led to a completely different level of engagement on the part of the communities." Five or six years later, that number had exponentially increased.
The majority of interviewees stressed that empowerment related projects are already prolific within the Bank's current work. For this reason, they pointed to the key role of a Community of Practice for exchanging information and connecting interested individuals. According to Page, "The important idea behind the Community of Practice that has been set up between our colleagues in SDV and ourselves, was really to try to begin to collect a lot of specific examples… so that we know that there's a body of good practices, of things that seem to work and there is more of a sense that one isn't reinventing the concept and testing out new ideas every time."
In terms of how empowerment has evolved in the Bank, each was positive. They listed numerous examples of the Bank's commitment to the empowerment agenda, including PRSPs, the WDR 2000/2001, CDF, as well as the inception of various departments and projects focused on empowering poor people. Johnson said, "I think CDD work is a very powerful manifestation of these concepts."
When asked about challenges in operationalizing the empowerment agenda, the four senior staff gave a variety of answers. Page spoke to the perception that empowerment can be considered a vague concept. Similarly, Edstrom remarked that if the term is used too frequently or loosely, it risks losing its impact. Johnson addressed potential problems with the political aspects of empowerment, while Nankani noted that more work could be done in terms of measurement.
In spite of the challenges facing empowerment, interviewees were optimistic about its future. Edstrom stressed the importance of remembering the nature of what empowerment "aspires to" while drawing out its elements, "so that the operational components of empowerment become a natural way of doing business."
Nankani put the role of empowerment in the larger framework of the Millennium Development Goals, saying, "We now need to ask ourselves, given what we know about empowerment, given how much of it is already taking place, how can we build on the conclusions of the WDR to try and reach out further and make it more possible to obtain the goals embodied in the MDGs?"
Page and Johnson mentioned that they expect the Bank to refine its role in regards to empowerment and utilize the Bank's comparative advantages, such as its ability to draw together various stakeholders.
Johnson concluded his interview by affirming that empowerment is "not a fad." He added, "what I don't see us ever doing, is dropping these issues." Back to Empowerment Newsletter (July 2003) |
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