Toward Citizens Enablement
a hand-up, not a hand out
After Covid-19, Academics should Enable/Empower Citizens to achieve their aspirations
Citizen Enablement
About our Proposal
Academics have the capabilities to enable citizens’ self-learning in order to empower them to achieve more for themselves. Those in current need must own their problems and issues, and by practical means, 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. Our studies of best practice show what can be achieved across a broad range of problems. For significant changes to occur, the values and behaviour of all collaborative partners – who have often in the past come from competing sub-cultures – must be combined, using a questioning framework, so they share ideas that lead to sensible working practices, and then enact feasible outcomes
Citizen Enablement
The Development of a Magical Playbook for Citizens Enablement
Why the current proposal: it came from a developing conversation between James Powell and Peter Palme, both Leonardo Ambassadors, concerning their joint desire to produce a step by step-by-step & non-threatening magical path to the better world of Citizen Enablement/Empowerment.
In an alternative view, both authors wanted to show how to create a deep, meaningful and lasting empowerment of citizens and communities, to enable their own self-development in order that they might achieve their desired ends.
While far from being magical, the approach in our proposal does try to lay down a few ‘home truths’, to those who wish to develop a more appropriate way of supporting citizens, in an important new journey which should also enable their own personal wealth to increase, as well as their well-being and contentment.
Citizen Enablement
A Compelling Conversation
to Whet your Appetite
Citizens are beginning to demand responses from their governments which will enable them to satisfy their future needs, wants and desires, more than ever before. For instance, look at how Marcus Rashford, the number 10 for Manchester United, recognised this when, with passion yet humility, he took on the British Government to convince them to provide free meal vouchers for the poor people of the UK; before he was a talented, rich and famous footballer, he had come from a poor single parent family, suffering the same plight of many poor youngsters today. So he took on their cause, and with a clear the knowledge of their situation, convinced those in power to change their rules to ‘what everyone else, knew to be right’. And he really knew well ‘why’ he needed to do this, on a matter of what nobody else had picked up on.
Citizen Enablement
Conversation Continued
After Covid 19, many citizens will be in the same situation themselves trying to develop ‘new normal ways of living and working’ and developing their own ‘whys’ for the future. They now realise no one size any longer fits all, and they want to become Enabled/Empowered to change their local world, for personal benefit and that of their fellow citizens. We believe we are now at a time, and stage, where new ways of working are now entirely possible and by way of example look at the current take up of video conferencing/zooming during Covid 19, when the technology has already been available for over 25 years. We call this new way, Citizen Enablement.
Citizens’ journeys to self-development and enablement, as with anyone wanting to make it, start with themselves and locally, and at any time people are ready. There is no longer a need to wait for the good fairy to come to the rescue, but is may not be as easy as I make it out, because much of the necessary change is no longer simple, predictable, orderly or defined; the world has now become volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous, as we have all seen in the present pandemic and this requires all of us to develop skills to think more systematically and systemically, about how we might drive change where enablement/empowerment needs to be personally contextualised.
Citizen Enablement
Conversation Continued
This is where academics can help citizens, with their knowledge and capabilities, which should drive citizens’ self-learning towards coping with even difficult issues, empowering them to achieve more for themselves. And, our studies of best practice, mainly in the UK, but also across Europe, do show what can be achieved in solving a broad range of problems, if change is directed towards education for the self-learning of citizens.
Citizen Enablement
Conversation Continued
For significant changes to occur for Citizens Enablement, the values and behaviour of both academics and citizens will need to alter: academics will need to refocus their efforts towards supporting citizens learning and the citizens themselves will have to gain the confidence to work in collaborative partnerships to their tackle their real world problems. But in a myriad of example we have shown how those who have often in the past come from competing sub-cultures – can combine their efforts.
Using a questioning framework to guide collaborations we have shown, in dozens of best practices how joint projects can be initiated where insightful academics and willing citizens can share ideas that lead to sensible working practices, which can then enact as feasible outcomes, satisfying important aspirations.
Citizen Enablement
Conversation Continued
Let’s just take a few examples we developed in the associated cities of Salford and Manchester and with the University of Salford: In an Action Learning project, which citizen began to call ‘Bouncing Higher’, small business managers learned in small teams how to cross fertilise each other’s best practices to enable them to develop better innovation and wealth creation – in this case making them a gross value added profit of around 2.4%. Similarly a Community Reporters
project, enabled by Peoples Voice Media, developed over 2,000 citizens now working across the whole of Europe, with different levels of professional quality
Citizen Enablement
Conversation Continued
Finally, Contraception: the Board Game was developed with the help of young citizens to help them learn about contraception and sexual health; it became a world leader and was translated into 3 languages.
We believe the world will be a very different place, with respect to higher learning after Covid 19.
We saw the cartoon on Twitter the other day, which shows how citizens enablement is still building well. Marcus Rashford, mentioned earlier, has continued his persistence on the British Government to continue funding poor children in the UK over the holidays through meal vouchers. Despite continously rejecting his call, they have at last agreed to give new support over the Christmas holiday. The cartoon depicts the front door of the British Prime Minister’s formal residence showing the control afforded by this young citizen, who has carefully portrayed the views of a nation. Citizens Enablement/Empowerment is indeed possible and we hope others will follow enabling their views to be heard.
Citizen Enablement
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