<P> In social work, empowerment offers an approach that allows social workers to increase the capacity for self - help of their clients . For example, this allows clients not to be seen as passive, helpless' victims' to be rescued but instead as a self - empowered person fighting abuse / oppression; a fight, in which the social worker takes the position of a facilitator, instead of the position of a' rescuer' . </P> <P> Marginalized people who lack self - sufficiency become, at a minimum, dependent on charity, or welfare . They lose their self - confidence because they cannot be fully self - supporting . The opportunities denied them also deprive them of the pride of accomplishment which others, who have those opportunities, can develop for themselves . This in turn can lead to psychological, social and even mental health problems . "Marginalized" here refers to the overt or covert trends within societies whereby those perceived as lacking desirable traits or deviating from the group norms tend to be excluded by wider society and ostracized as undesirables . </P> <P> According to Robert Adams, there is a long tradition in the UK and the USA respectively to advance forms of self - help that have developed and contributed to more recent concepts of empowerment . For example, the free enterprise economic theories of Milton Friedman embraced self - help as a respectable contributor to the economy . Both the Republicans in the US and the Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher built on these theories .' At the same time, the mutual aid aspects of the concept of self - help retained some currency with socialists and democrats .' </P> <P> In economic development, the empowerment approach focuses on mobilizing the self - help efforts of the poor, rather than providing them with social welfare . Economic empowerment is also the empowering of previously disadvantaged sections of the population, for example, in many previously colonized African countries . </P>

The first step for an organization to start the empowerment process is to