I was recently invited by a friend to speak at an event. It was a Mom’s night out with the title ‘Diva Feva’ and my brief had been to share on safety as I work in the field of safeguarding children. But with the spin of using the title of the evening that being ‘Diva’s’ we feel powerful and in charge, but not everyone has that luxury, and to be aware of those around us, like children and other vulnerable groups of people. Niqui Cloete Barras was hosting the evening and using her vast talent to entertain through song, comedy and fun activities. I had sat and thought about how I was going to turn my normal talk on safety and child protection into something that works for this particular evening and what normally could take about an hour and a half now needed to be put into a 15 minute talk. Hah! Not so easy.
But, about a week before the event everything fell into place due to a number of different conversations listened to in person and online. A thread emerged that could make sense with the evening theme, talking on protection and empowerment of the vulnerable and something encouraging for the Mom’s to take away and implement in their everyday lives. I thought to share the talk on my blog too.
We use the word empower quite easily and frequently. I have it in my vison for Pilot My Future – Empowered Youth. Transformed Nation. The name Pilot my Future comes from the heartbeat behind the organization of allowing young people to see that they have agency over their lives. They have the power to choose and that choices they make now will impact their futures, and will ultimately help them to 'fly their planes or crash somewhere'. We want to inspire them to make good and wise choices and to 'fly' well in their lives.
I think we would all agree that the word Diva carries a certain power in it. (And yes it has positive and negative definitions if you look on the web.) We certainly are all special and important in this world and we were aware of the fun aspect of the title for the night. The invite was pretty powerful by inviting all dazzling, incredible, vivacious and amazing Mothers for a glamourous evening of song, comedy and fun with Niqui. But, I pointed out that we should be aware of people who might not think that about themselves or to be able to be that without maybe a little or a lot of help from others.
Recently a few conversations and comments from different people had caused me to think deeply and had really lit a light bulb for me around the word empower.
The dictionary says this about empower, “it’s to give someone the authority or power to do something or to make someone stronger and more confident, especially in controlling their life and claiming their rights.”
But ultimately we can put all of that to someone, but in order for it to happen, they need to take the action themselves. “If it is to be, it is up to me!” a well known quote by William Johnsen.
One of our offerings at Pilot My Future is the Protective Behaviours programme which is teaching and giving children and teens knowledge and skills in personal safety. We give them the tools to look out for themselves in our sometimes very unsafe world. But we work with the parents in the same area because children do not have the same levels of power in this world as adults do, hence why abuse so often involves children or those who are vulnerable for other reasons. So we work together, hand in hand, using the whole village to raise and protect our children. As children grow, so does their power in the world. They have a voice, but they just need to learn to use it. Protective Behaviours is a 10 week course and on the one week we teach the safety continuum which is all about different stages of safety that we experience through our feelings - safe, fun to feel scared (roller coaster ride), risk on purpose (having a necessary injection or going to the dentist) and unsafe. We would have already taught the lesson on our early warning signs which are basically the autonomic bodily reactions we experience when we are scared or excited. With each stage we look at how choice, control, time limit and early warning signs interact.
When feeling safe we feel good and probably will have no early warning signs playing out. In all the other spaces there will be early warning signs, but we need to ask ourselves why they are present. “What is going on? Why do I have early warning signs?” Sometimes I have chosen to feel scared or I am feeling scared because of something like the dentist, but I have choice and control and I know there’s a time limit involved, so I can talk with someone or do some self regulating exercises to feel calm and safe again.
However I would be in the unsafe space when I have no choice and control, there is no known time limit and I have many early warning signs. I either need to get away from what is causing this or find someone on my safety network to talk with so I can work towards feeling safe again.
We cannot guarantee actual safety to anyone in our world, but we can always work with the feelings of safety.
Now think back to lockdown and how choice, control and time limit played out there. Personally I felt it was necessary for them to do what they did, but think where we landed on the scale - we were sitting in the unsafe space with no end in sight, so no wonder there were high levels of anger, frustration and anxiety - all our early warning signs were on high alert. There was lots of trauma and people talking about their rights - all because people wanted choice.
I was recently in a discussion on homelessness and one of the people at my table was a man by the name of Phinius Sebatsane. He reminded us of the statement, ‘beggars should not be choosers!’ which has been used on repeat by way too many people in our world. And then he said if you take choice away you are no longer human! That sat with me. So often in our world we have dehumanized people in an effort to make them seem less important or not important at all because it releases us from any obligation or need to reach out and help. People have been called names like cockroaches, insects, monkeys and beasts in an effort to remove humanity from them. It makes it easier to exert control over them, but when we dehumanize others we lose some of our humanity in the process. Taking choice away is part of the dehumanizing and oppressing process of people and it creates a huge power imbalance. An example of a simple way to bring choice back into the equation of helping those who live on the street would be to offer 2 types of food or to give clothing vouchers so that they can choose from clothing to be given to them, instead of just receiving someone elses’s choice.
Then I was listening to Danielle Strickland sharing live on Instagram just before she climbed Mount Kilimanjaro last week with World Vision. It was in connection with Change Agents in Africa and the Chosen Campaign where people from the West (like her) say they are willing to partner with Africa with the gifts they have and to help the change agents (children) to bring about change in their community. The children are then given pictures of the willing partners and they have ‘Chosen parties’ where the change agent child gets to choose who they want to partner with.
She goes onto explain that the origin of poverty is disempowerment, when people can’t choose. So, one way to start to combat poverty is to choose and create meaningful and good choices.
That choice then has ripple effects for other people who realise they can’t live without partnerships in this world because we need each other to see all there is to see or to be in this world.
So choice and empowerment go hand in hand. Think of little kids and their favourite word being no. Often they are wanting to bring some choice and control into their little worlds. So let’s bring choice back even in small ways and maybe we won’t hear the word no so often. We can give choice of food or clothing - this or that? Making good choices takes practice. We can’t expect good choices if someone is never given the opportunity for practice. And one good choice leads to another.
If we look at Erikson’s developmental stages we see autonomy vs shame and doubt in the 1-3 year old phase. This builds power in independence followed in the next stages by initiative, self confidence, identity, intimacy, relationships and family. Those steps are all important and get messed up without basic choice being factored in. Giving choice restores dignity and humanity and it builds confidence and power.
This also reminds me of teenagers who no longer want our choice of clothing for a gift but they would rather have a voucher or money so that they can choose for themselves. It’s a gaining power and confidence part of growing up. There were a group of younger ladies in the room all nodding their heads to this comment. Even for ourselves we would probably appreciate the gesture if someone bought us clothing and says they have left the slip in the packet and that we are welcome to exchange it if we would like to.
“I choose to. It’s my idea” is a very empowering statement to make and lift us out of feeling sorry for ourselves and any victim mentality too. Just think that washing dishes does not have to be that we have to do it or are forced to do it. We can flip it around and make it our choice. We even had choice at the event we were at as the invite had said that dress-up was optional. I chose to do it because I love the opportunity for dress-up fun.
One more note about choice. We do not want to mess with it and abuse it because we will land up losing it and find life having more restrictions. There are always consequences for our choices. Let’s make them positive ones and keep freedom of choice alive. We will continue to empower ourselves and those around us.
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