About The Empowered World View
The perspective that is empowered and strengthened aims for humans to understand their identity as the image and likeness of God created with all active, creative abilities. In the Book of Genesis 1:28, it is stated how God's plan and God's command to humans when humans were created, namely to carry out God's plan for humans. But in fact, today, we find many people, especially those in poverty, living in a syndrome of dependence on assistance from other parties or outsiders.
A life of dependence on others, without the willingness to empower oneself, always begins with a wrong view of one's own identity. For example, there are many areas where the stunting rate is high, even though the land in the community is fertile. This means that there is no empowerment effort using assets and mindset through an empowered perspective.
All individuals have the potential to be developed, but if only developed individually, the results will not be maximized. Community-based asset empowerment will better achieve welfare goals that have an impact on building creative hope and giving birth to new leaders and creating ideas to answer existing challenges.
Building Creative Hope
There are several pillars that support the community to be strong, through identity, compassion, vision and action, which are based on the foundation of faith and based on the understanding of Scripture. Identity needs to be explored to discover the challenges that exist in the community.
When WVI facilitated a meeting and asked mothers in Alor who are empowered through weaving groups, they stated, "We weave because of the economic needs of the household and the needs of the children. Crafts from our business have the advantage of good quality, using natural dyes and marine life,". A creative action is not only for individuals in a community, but also has an impact in the community if mobilized together.
The community must be empowered and it starts with a changed mindset. If all individuals in the community are willing to contribute to the empowerment of their community, a creative endeavor will be achieved. The obstacle is that not all individuals are willing to contribute because they do not want to give themselves and sacrifice for their community. The feeling of eman (Javanese), which means pity or compassion, also means not giving of oneself, is a potential obstacle. Whatever is done for community empowerment should consider the resources being empowered to encourage the community to develop its full potential and capacity.
Creating Leaders, Creating Challenges
Challenging situations will give birth to natural leaders. Whether driven by necessity or urgency, i.e. an urgent situation, it will be motivated to give birth to creativity. When a leader is born, the leader will look for the best way to achieve and realize dreams and ideals together.
Inspiration to create will lead to creativity to unleash all resources maximally for the community. An empowering leader will focus on finding solutions to the problems facing himself and his community. In many instances, leaders also grow from the challenges they face. The challenges become a kind of touchstone to measure their leadership capacity or ability. Leaders who creatively respond to challenges and are able to mobilize the potential of their communities will make collaborative and transformational leadership patterns.
This article was prepared as a reflection on the Empowered World View (EWV) training activities facilitated by WVI. This activity was conducted in partnership with churches in Alor and South Central Timor.
Writer: Anil Dawan (Faith and Development Manager)
Editor: Mariana Kurniawati (Communication Executive)
