I remember, once in a local community, people were invited to attend a planning programme. I started to facilitate the meeting based on the process that had been designed. During the meeting, one of the local authorities thought that he should intervene, and when necessary, he started to continue the meeting without me. I let him continue, since I was really tired on that day (and of course I had no other choice); but then I found that he was just trying to end the meeting, since somehow, he might have thought that the people might demand something more than the capacity they had as local authorities of the municipality (as a governmental ). That was one of the worse memories of my facilitation activities.
Community empowerment will not happen without a general change within the system. The whole administrative system has to accept that such empowerment activities are a part of the general policy. In fact, the community acts within an environment and receives so many inputs from the environment. An enabling environment can help a community to move forward while a disabling environment impedes a community to progress.
However, a facilitator who is involved in community empowerment cannot wait until the system accepts the general idea of community empowerment. He or she has to start her work, even if there are problems. It means people have to experience participatory decision-making. That can start with very small projects in community. Such small activities will affect the environment.
