HEMP: Hosting Empowerment

We are a group of dedicated leaders and facilitators from Germany, Italy, Hungary, Sweden, Austria and Portugal, who work in “Transformation Academies”. We all empower and support individuals and teams to actively shape society towards a more human, joyful and sustainable world.

Hosting Empowerment is a three-year programme funded by the EU’s Erasmus+ programme (2020-2023). Its objective is to enable vulnerable groups to become more active citizens. We will research how to create settings that strengthen courage, self-confidence, and self-efficiency.

Why empowerment?

In our experience, a major obstacle to contributing to positive social change is a lack of confidence, in individuals and groups, in their own ability to affect society This is particularly true for vulnerable groups. Our project focuses on empowering such groups to take action and improve their own circumstances. We regard empowerment as one of the three pillars of social innovation, alongside ‘meeting human needs’ and ‘changing social relations’.

Vulnerbale groups are especially affected

The feeling of deficit is particularly stressful for those who feel already marginalized, excluded, disadvantaged or in difficult life situations such as refugee populations, the socially or educationally excluded, ethnic minorities, unemployed or homeless, those with chronic illnesses or disabilities. This lack of self-confidence can fuels a downward spiral leading to a lack of self-sufficiency, which again intensifies the need for external help by charities or welfare.

• We envision a society where vulnerability can even be empowering (due to amplified skills) and each person is capable of influencing their own circumstances and destiny. Therefore, our mission is to inspire and nourish vulnerable groups as well as and those who care for them.
• We will make available methods, tools and skills to enable facilitators to become even more effective in supporting their participants to become increasingly empowered and active.
• We will develop a guidebook for facilitators, a microlearning empowerment app, empowerment tools for our method database, a playbook, and a short film
• Furthermore, we will disseminate our approach and our empowering products with 10 events in our partners’ countries. They will each last one day and serve facilitators or inspirational leaders in the field of lifelong learning.