Toward citizens enablement: A hand-up - not a hand out

ABSTRACT

Academics have the capability to enable citizens’ self-learning to empower them to achieve more for themselves. Those in current need must own their problems and issues, and learn to embrace them & enact solutions. The innovative capabilities of both academics and citizens can be combined to solve almost any issue facing a community. Past studies of best practice show what can be achieved across a broad range of problems. For significant changes to occur, the values and behavior of all collaborative partners must be combined, using a questioning framework, so they share ideas that lead to sensible working practices, and then enact feasible outcomes. This article presents a sensible working approach where academics have learned to support citizens and best practices have been developed in urban and rural contexts where disenfranchised citizens have indeed learned how to cope with their own social, economic, political, cultural, environmental and other human issues.

KEYWORDS:

• Citizen
• enablement
• empowerment

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. The author developed the work presented here while he was Pro Vice Chancellor at Salford University a decade ago, and is based upon more than three decades of research and development while he was enabling university academics to develop a better way of empowering disenfranchised and often poor citizens learn to control their lives in a more fulfilling way, for their benefit and those of others in their communities. For more details of the R&D, see http://www.citizenenablement/net/forum.