Building sustainable futures from the ground up

At the foundation of Empowerment WORKS is a collaboration road map called "7 Stages to Sustainability (7SS)" - empowering communities to build sustainable futures from the ground up.

While Empowerment WORKS promotes 7 Stages to Sustainability as an Asset Based Community-driven Development (ABCD) framework, philosophy and movement, it's pattern is inherent in all sustainable social and economic systems and is used to catalyze business, technological and social innovation.

To strengthen coherence and meaningful collaboration across all sectors of society, Empowerment WORKS is dedicated to scaling this approach through the Partners in Empowerment (PIE) network, framework, and related tools - and thus unite facilitate the participation of humanity in locally-led solutions which are using it too.

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 creating 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 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.