December 10th, 2018

       The concept of empowerment is difficult to understand.

If I think of myself and how I have empowered myself throughout my life, I can summarize perfectly the decisions I’ve taken, but it’s hard for me to explain how I made those decisions. I could try to do it by talking about context, about that specific period, about my personal, family, and social situation at that moment, but it’s hard to be aware of my own empowerment process. I can come up with expressions to define this process like self-confidence, conviction, bond, critic mind, etc.

With this brief reflection, I think I can define empowerment as a learning process in which we acquire different skills, abilities, and knowledge to face decisions and challenges.

Evidently, our own abilities, previous experiences, different environments or social/family spaces, and the moments in which these occur intervene in this process. For me, the aim of empowerment is to be able to make decisions and face adversities, having in mind who I am and what I want, without forgetting that we are social beings.

To me, the differences in the empowerment processes that people go through come from our own diversity. Learning that we are different can help us understand more easily why some

people react in a certain way in a given situation and some others react in another.

To me, one way of allowing students realize that they are somehow different from each other is making their problems and potentials clear by putting it on words verbally. And then make it clear for the others.