On the last paragraph, we explained the meaning of the disempowerment. And we talk about some of the situation of youths disempowerment with the system in the today's society, also cited some examples to let you understand. Finally, I remind helpers should avoid duplication of disempowering strategies, methods or even the system to help our youths. Then what should we do? In this paragraph, I will introduce the viewpoint of the so-called "empathetic". How can we avoid the negative impact, caused by disempowerment, through the strategy of empowerment? What is so called "empowerment"? The concept of empowerment can also be referred to"培力" and "賦權" in Chinese. "賦" in Chinese means giving, instead of father. It's the concept of gaining power. The definition of empowerment refers to increasing individual control of the environment and the fulfillment of ideals, and helping groups, who are in a vulnerable situation, lacking of rights or oppressed by other rights, to face a hostile environment, rather than being passive, leaving them at the mercy of the environment and do nothing. Empowerment, in fact, is a prevailing view of social work circles at home and abroad, I hope to develop another work method or vision, in the waves of discussing problems formation and trying to change problems. What is the connotation of the empowerment? There are three main points, the first point is to give the right to authority or law, The second point is so-called enabling, Provide methods, or some opportunities to increase the likelihood, feasibility and ease. The third point is self-fulfilling and improving influential, In other words, empowerment basically includes two main points, the view of "power to" is to emphasize ability, and the view of "power over" towards power. What is "power to"? In short, it emphasizes resilience or protective factors of individual, People who hold such ideas believe that people are capable, and motivated. We are flexible, but we still should be respected, And people have the ability to change themselves and their environment, Maybe it's the adversities that makes them powerless to change, temporarily incapable. But if helpers help them, it's possible to exert these abilities to overcome or improve adversity. it's possible to exert these abilities to overcome or improve adversity. What is "power over"? People who hold the view of "power over" emphasize that helpers must experience the structure of the existing mainstream society, that causes the disadvantaged groups to lack rights and the resource of self-actualization. They are a group oppressed by the structure of mainstream society, So people, hold the view of "power over", believe that we need social reforms and social practices. This shows that the view of empowerment must start with both micro-view and macro-view, Is this echoing what we talked about in previous lecture of the view of ecosystem? That's right! The viewpoint of individual's superiority, the strengthening of resilience, the advocacy of social issues , and the actions of reform are all very important concepts to empowerment. What about social work professionals? In this process, they're playing a very important role. And then I'm going to take a closer look at some of the conceptual connotations of "power to" and "power over", "Power to" is the intension of resilience or protective factor. These two concepts sound similar, but if we dig further, we find that there are some differences. I'll start with the concept of resilience, the resilience in English is originated in Latin. is a combination of the two concepts of jumping and bouncing back, Literally, Pat, just like we're doing a action of putting pressure on a ball, it will bounce back, so in this patting and bouncing action, we see a dynamic process, What does this dynamic process reflect? Reflecting the resilience of the three aspects you want to emphasize, First, it is the individual's efforts under the strong external pressure to maintain or restore the internal and external balance. Think about the example of the ball. If we patting the ball, it will bounce back, Patting again, it bounces back once again. In this way, a balanced relationship has been maintained. The second aspect refers to the ability of individuals to return to normal after a major trauma, such as the post-disaster resilience we have often heard, After some natural disasters and catastrophes, how the victims get out of the traumas and adapt to new life. Third, it is the result of an individual's balance between stress and crisis, as well as the relationship between response and ability. In Taiwan, Good Shepherd Social Welfare Foundation once translated "resilience" into "tenacity". Tenacity means 韌性 in Chinese, but be careful that 韌 is the second character in 堅韌 which means tough or tensile, instead of the first character in 任性 which means willfulness. Toughness here is the particular ability that people can still perform well in the face of great difficulties. It actually refers to a combination of two abilities, which are the ability to resist and to actively construct. The resilience must also contain two important conditions. First, the individual must be exposed to major adversity. In other words, resilience is hard to be found when everything goes smoothly. Just like If you never bounce the ball, it will never bounce back. Another condition is that even in the face of adversity, the individual can normally adapt itself. It won't be meaningful for us to understand resilience until under these two conditions. Then I am going to introduce how resilience becomes an issue concerned in academic circles. There is a classical research in developmental psychology, conducted by American developmental psychologists Werner, Smith and their team. The research, in fact, started a long time ago in 1954. They launched a longitudinal study among infants born at that time for 24 years on an island in northwestern Hawaii. But this Hawaii was not the one you imagine full of beaches and beauties. Instead, it is the Hawaii in 1954. But why those infants? The psychologists wanted to know if these babies born in 1955 would show any antisocial behavior or other problems related to their physical and mental development during their childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. Then why the island, Hawaii? As I just mentioned, there was no beauties, beaches, romance or tourist attractions in Hawaii at that time. In fact, the residents then were descendants of immigrants from Southeast Asia and Europe. Their ancestors came here for planting sucrose and pineapples. They worked hard in cultivation, struggling to survive in the agricultural community. These pioneers really lived in hard conditions with poor economic status. So the research team was interested that if living in such poverty in an island for a long time could have any influence on the development of children and youths. Because we can clearly know that its environment is unfavorable and they are impoverished. What difficulties these people encountered and how they overcome it to become an adult? It's a very interesting topic, under long-term trace, Verner Smith with his research team found that although his research object, living in a difficult economic environment, not all of them grow up with so-called mental problems, or behavioral problems, Many of them still go into adulthood smoothly, So they are very curious about what happened? Why can a child who grows up in these disadvantages keep himself unspotted from the world? In this study, they found very important protective factors, They find that adversities are the same, but each person experiences different protective factors, These protective factors buffer the negative impact of adversity on people, Let these youths overcome their adversities and grow smoothly even in the face of external pressure. And their entire study has found out that among these protection factors, support from professionals and volunteers is most helpful to them, that is, we the helpers, as well as all the people around us who care about youths, It can provide features of assistance and protection for youths in adversities, So at the end of that book, it also suggested some strategies that we could go into with and deal with, , with the help of this discovery, many follow-up researches began to concern the issue of resilience, , because the development of resilience will affect future growth, most of them also focus on the groups of children and youths. These topics are all about resilience and other factors that help children to revert in adversity. In addition, the concept of resilience can also be applied on the study of youths' deviant behaviors, like violence, drug addiction, and their consequences. It's worth noting that protective factors will not affect people's resilience when they are in favorable circumstances. In the earlier example, a ball stays still on the ground if we do not touch it. Only when people put force on it that the ball may bounce up. Putting this in mind, we can know think about adversity. Only with the existence of threat and risk factors that protective factors can affect a person to return to its original state. I believe all of you have heard the three important points I raised. Protective factors, risk factors, and resilience. I want you have a little practice. In the earlier example, what is the relationship between these three concepts? Do you get the answer correct? Basically, the relationship of these ideas is easy. We can apply a mathematical concept on it. That is, when risk factors join along with protective factors, they thus form resilience to be shown. You may wonder that, why don't I have resilience? It is because you are lucky. The environment you live in does not have risk factors yet. You are able to use your environment and your resource to live in the society. However, the people we help are under privileged youths. Most of them are in dangerous circumstances or live in environments with high risk. How can they return to the original state with the operation of protective factors? This is what we helpers try hard to achieve. We have talked about resilience and protective factors. In the formula, Smith's research group also discovered the importance of protective factors. A function that helps protective factors to work is that, according to Smith's group, professional supports and the assistance from volunteers are really important. Besides of this one, is there other types of protective factors? Yes, of course. Protective factors can be categorized in two main types. One can be known from individual's aspect. Each person has different personality traits. Some kids are born with better skills, having a sense of humor. They can control themselves better, and they have higher self esteem. These enable a kid to conquer and deal with pressure. Values and beliefs, like being responsible and holding positive attitudes, are also protective factors that help a person to be more likely to revert in adversities. But we should not forget that, besides these personality traits, supports from the society are also important. Like social support system and secure attachment from their parents. Others like adults, teachers in school, relatives in the same family, these are all important support system. As for the resource we can use in the society, like our welfare system, these are all crucial sources of protective factors. In other words, if we combine the concept that resilience and protective factors work together, we can apply it on our work. When we estimate whether a youth is in crisis, we should not forget to take a look at his surrounding. Observe if there is any protective factor available. Moreover, we can become the youth's protective factor as well. In the process, we do not merely try to eliminate dangerous. When we find out that risk factors cannot be tackled down, In short, we found that his parents have some problems, but we can not change his parents, How can we deal with it? We can think about this: Is it possible that maybe we can become a protective factor? Can we act as the youth's support from the society? Only by doing so can we help the youth to believe: I have, I am, and I can. Our assistance thus enables him to revert in adversity. What I mention above is "Power to". What about "Power over"? After discussing "Power to", let's talk about "Power over". In order to put "Power over" into reality, we should take a look at the limitation in the structure of the mainstream society first. Then we put our finest effort in changing the youth's helpless and powerless state. The implementation of "Power over" is not hard at all. That is let youths join the decision making process that are related with their rights and they are interested in. youths should have the right to represent. They should also have the right to be involved in those topics and policies that are related with their future. To reach this goal, we should help youths to absorb some knowledge, like learning skills and managing these information to get a job. youths can learn to have confidence and determination of choosing their life via understanding their own values, equality, and civil rights. Therefore, Power over can enhance the ability of self-determination and self-awareness, so youths can have greater rights to be responsible for their own lives, avoided them to shirk responsibilities to adults, and reduce their antithetic relations with adults. As a result, youths would be more willing to care about the society and willing to get rid of the role of the grantee or dependent person. In this way, adults can improve their understanding and acceptance of youths through the contact with youths. On the other hand, we also hope that youths will not be considered as social problems anymore. But can be a group of people who follow us to care about society and contribute to society. Last but not least, with the participation of policies, youths not only focus on their own interests, or whether they have rights. Let them look around the world, fulfill their duties with adults. That is, the final purpose of empowerment is to transform rights into responsibilities. A person who is willing to be responsible for is a person who can be fully empowered. Let's think about a question if you want to promote a plan today, Which of the following is the most appropriate to the spirit of empowerment? Are you correct? I would like to explain to you what the meaning of these 4 kinds of practices represents. Among the programs led by adults, youth became just a person who supports adults' views. Because we do activities, youths have to join. Sometimes, we even think of it as a reason to do activities. Because of young people like it, so we do it. However, for youths, it is yours, not ours. Sometimes our social workers will find out that we have done some activities but no youths want to participate. Why don't they like it? Why don't they join? Only to make young to lead, to share right with adults, they may actually be involved. Did someone start worrying about this? Wow, so much power for youths, isn't it encouraging them to rebel? When I talk about this concept, a lot of adults have such a worry. These adults are not older people. Even some young adults have such a worry about how can youths have such rights. If your mind flashes the thought, I am not surprised, I used to be one of them. Because I was worried and I care too. However, it is precisely because of our concern that we virtually create a kind of disempowerment environment and system. Therefore, if we want to implement empowerment, we have to change our role of benefactors. We are not giving favors to these youths. While we assisted the youth, worked with them to change their situation.
