Building sustainable futures from the ground up
At the foundation of Empowerment WORKS, 7 Stages to Sustainability (7SS) is a collaboration road map, an Asset Based Community-driven Development (ABCD) framework, philosophy of self-determination and an educational curriculum empowering communities to build sustainable futures from the ground up.
In short, 7 Stages to Sustainability is a tool to transform poverty into prosperity in the world's most economically challenged communities.
And, modeling the way nature creates, the 7SS pattern is universal and used world-wide to catalyze innovation in business, technology, music and even movies. Although those using it have little or no awareness of one another, the widely distributed 7SS pattern, termed 'monomyth' by author Joseph Campbell (a.k.a. Hero's Journey), is inherent in most (if not all) other functional systems.
Therefore, to strengthen coherence and meaningful collaboration across all sectors of society - and thus unite much more of humanity in local solutions, Empowerment WORKS is dedicated to scaling this approach through Partners in Empowerment (PIE) and related tools. .
7SS as a Framework for Participatory Community Development
Stages 1-3: THE INTERNAL FOCUS
1. Build a team around your ideal future. Find Partners In Empowerment - community members, local organizations, businesses & others dedicated to positive change.
2. Assess local assets = economic opportunities. Explore the richness of human (talents, skills, cultural gifts) and sustainable natural resources right in your backyard. Take inventory of your village, city, region. (Asset-Based Community Development).
3. Make a plan (co-create solutions). Work with your team to find the root causes of local challenges. Outline local needs, your mission, goals, how you will measure success, and then actions. Agree who will do what and how you will share responsibilities.
Stages 4-6: THE EXTERNAL FOCUS
4. Educate Yourself and Learn from Others. Get the basic education and skills you, your team need to make an impact. Help train those who are going to carry on the work. Identify the training & technical support local teams will need to deliver what is needed.
5. Identify, exchange & invest in LOCALLY appropriate technologies & critical information in health, energy, transportation, construction, agriculture, water, IT, education, etc. - How can you ADD GREATEST VALUE to your LOCAL ASSETS (Stage 2)?
6. Harness the power of the private sector to deliver what's needed & create livelihoods for people in need. Link existing resources (Stage 1 & 2) with skills & technologies (Stage 4 & 5) to develop products and services that value and protect local heritage.
Stage 7: THE CULMINATION
7. Reinvest in Impact & Deepen Sustainability. Build Public-Private Partnerships for Self-Reliance. As projects need to run on their own, ensure that the community support systems are regenerative & self-repairing. Develop, reinforce, refine and deepen the mutually supportive multi-sector exchanges yielding long-term income streams to sustain local impact.
Uniting complimentary resources of local and global communities
*See & Co-create 7SS outcomes with Partners in Empowerment (PIE)
