Child and youth empowerment: Academic literature review

‘Empowerment’ has been defined and approached in many different ways across the study and practice of development and humanitarianism, drawing on radical histories of anti-colonial and feminist resistance as well as more mainstream psychological and socio-economic thinking. All of these conceptions make important contributions, but research suggests that in practice mainstream institutional approaches tend to be limited because they take POWER – and thus relations of inequality and injustice – out of their analyses and interventions. Empowerment practice can be strengthened by bringing greater awareness of power back into thinking and doing emPOWERment.