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The term 'empower' has become ubiquitous within the social development sector. Empowerment has become the answer to most problems, and it is a rare development initiative that does not overtly seek to empower somebody. And yet, the term is used loosely, without regard to the variety of meanings and flavours of power that make it up, rendering it as a standardised and meaningless jargon instead of a subtle and nuanced word with deep implications for development policy and practice. This article looks to understand empowerment in the social development context by exploring its roots in the term 'power'. It delves into power in its abstract form, in its relationship with structure and agency, in its role in participatory processes and in its function in governance and development. It also goes into the multiple ways by which communities resist power and its imposition upon them. In the process, it explores the thinking of intellectuals such as Riker, Dahl, Lukes, Foucault, Giddens, Olson, de Certeau, Scott and Havel on power and brings these multiple understandings and meanings into a single narrative. It concludes that a single universal definition of power may not be possible given the multiplicity of contexts within which it is used, and that each of these contexts and their underlying assumptions has implications on the usage of the term 'empower'. It goes on to suggest that those using the term 'empower' would be well advised to state their own assumptions on power and the context within which they use it such as, inter alia, is it transferrable via empowerment. Does it exist in an act, or is it universal and always there? Does the empowerment of one necessarily mean the disempowerment of another so that the sum total of power in a community is constant? In the process, the article looks to provide development practitioners with a broad perspective on power so that they use the term 'empower' with specificity and precision.

Poverty is one of the social problems which requires teamwork and synergy to counter it. Poverty is not only the government's responsibility but also other stakeholders. Damandiri Foundation takes a role to help counter measuring poverty through community empowerment concept by initiating the establishment of Family Empowerment Post (Posdaya). Posdaya is not only associated with material or economic aspect but also with social relation intended to build through this Posdaya so that this program can be sustainable among the society. The purposes of the present study were: 1) to find out the role of parties involved in community empowerment through Posdaya, and the social relation built among the stakeholders; 2 ) to find out the pattern of synergy in the attempt of developing Posdaya to be sustainable community empowerment program. The present study employed qualitative approach, this approach was employed to obtain an in-depth understanding of the implementation of Posdaya program initiated by Damandiri Foundation. The result of the study shows that the stakeholders, especially Damandiri Foundation, Government, especially regional government, Universities, and Private sectors should maintain their involvement to continue and support Posdaya, especially the established ones, and develop communication network pattern that allows all parties to take active participation in developing Posdaya.

This article provides a critical analysis of the important developments and problematic issues concerning the election of sectoral representatives in local legislative bodies or sanggunians and their implications to the Local Government Code's vision of empowering the powerless. It discusses pending legislation in the House of Representatives and resolutions passed by local leagues that unconstitutionally deter genuine people's participation in local governance, as they are veiled attempts to further the dominance of those in power while continuing to disenfranchise the powerless. The country's elected leaders need to look beyond their hold on power and money; local legislators and politicians must look beyond the financial considerations of sectoral representation, as the dividends of empowerment would eventually create self-reliant communities. This would allow local leaders and their constituents to build a strong partnership and harness capabilities to extract resources for local development.

The legacy of the federal government's Empowerment Zone initiative is contested. The evidence undergirding the initiative's legacy, however, is based primarily on models that estimate national effects. We use an alternative evaluation strategy that places greater emphasis on local Empowerment Zones as distinct programs. Our findings show that several cities did produce improvements that likely can be attributed to the EZ initiative. The results, however, are not consistent across outcomes or cities. Our findings suggest that what happens locally is a vital concern for federal urban policy and also informative for local communities with responsibility for crafting and executing revitalization strategies.

Women empowerment has been the subject matter of concern for decades in all countries of the world. India with specific reference has been subject to greater inequality with women empowerment being a distant dream even today in certain parts of the country. The paper is an attempt to highlight the significance of women empowerment for a nation. The current scenario prevalent with regard to women empowerment on various spheres in the country has been highlighted with various measures and the challenges for the same have been noted. The paper concludes that more micro-level assessment of women empowerment has to be done in India to make the various measures and schemes of the government more meaningful and help achieve gender equality.