Empowering destitute people towards transforming communities

5.2What strengths?

Strengths-based practice assesses the inherent strengths of people, then builds on them. It uses peoples' personal strengths to aid in recovery and empowerment. Saleeby (1997:101-123) provides us with a list of factors to consider when looking for a person’s strengths:

1. 
   What people have learned about themselves, others, and their world.
   
2. 
   Personal qualities, traits, and virtues that people possess.
   
3. 
   What people know about the world around them.
   
4. 
   The talents and skills that people have.
   
5. 
   Cultural and personal stories and lore.
   
6. 
   Pride.
   
7. 
   The community.
   

5.3Dealing with common misconceptions about strength-based approaches

In doing missions with the destitute, there are a number of common misconceptions about such an approach against which we should guard (Van Wormer, 1998:4-6). They are:

5.3.1“If we talk about strengths, we must ignore needs”

The strengths-based perspective concerns balance. It requires us to notice, acknowledge and respond to needs. Yet, it requires us at the same moment to begin looking for and talking about strengths and capacities. It brings balance to thought patterns and interactions that have previously been only focused on what is wrong. Many of us do not know what strengths are nor do we have a vocabulary for them. Both the popular media and academia have inundated us with ways to describe what is wrong with people. We can employ popular and technical terms for almost every type of failing or problem. Yet, there is no compendium of diagnoses for what people are doing right. A strengths vocabulary contains ordinary words: loyalty, wisdom, friends, family, church, hope, dreams, and love.

5.3.2“We’ll be manipulated and duped by clients”

Some, when engaging in missions with the destitute, fear that using a strengths perspective will signal to their clients that they are “soft” or naïve, allowing people to abuse the system to gain more benefits or services than those to which they are entitled. However, the strengths perspective deals with respect, caring, and empowerment. It does not suggest that helpers wear rose-coloured glasses or ignore what their training and instincts tell them.

5.3.3“We’ll be wasting the expertise we’ve accumulated in learning what is wrong with people”

This expertise is as important as ever. Using a strengths based approach is about adding to one’s toolbox, not emptying it out and starting over. It does require some shifts in beliefs and actions as to when to use which tool.

5.3.4“We’ll be seen as not holding clients accountable for their behaviour”

Saleebey (1997:45) cited a situation where staff members in a child protection agency were concerned that efforts to identify strengths in families where parents were abusive or neglectful would be viewed as implying that the child was responsible for being maltreated. While this is clearly a very sensitive issue, in most cases a careful approach leaves room for both accountability and acknowledging the strengths that parents have.

5.4Conclusion

All of the above strengthens my conviction that every person in the “helping professions” would benefit from knowing about and using asset or strength-based approaches, even with people we would describe as in extreme need or in crisis. In doing so, we can help them draw upon their existing strengths to deal with the current situation and to reorganize their lives over the long term. Failing to address the strengths side of the human equation, with at least as much attention as we give to deficits and problems, seems to short-change those we profess to help. Perhaps a more fundamental shift is to think of assets and strengths as basic needs – ones with the same priority and urgency that we have previously associated with hunger for food and thirst for water.
In the words of Saleebey (1997:67):

Hopes and dreams, skills and capabilities reside inside almost everyone; we need to help uncover them as an essential survival tool – and as a doorway out of lack and deprivation. Our ability, when doing missions with the destitute, to notice and talk about strengths and skills while we are attending to crises or basic needs is critical. It can plant the seeds that can be nurtured further as the situation stabilizes.

6The destitute are people trying to protect their own fragile dignity

The concept of human dignity has been emerging of late in a very strong form, as part of the basic human rights of poor people. “Dignity International” is one example, an organization aiming for “all human rights for all”. Kraynak and Tinder (2003:10-15) contend that the major challenge of our time is to recover a true and authentic understanding of human dignity and to defend it against threats from modern civilization. They wrestle with the dilemma that contemporary society has developed a heightened sensitivity to the demands of human dignity while creating radically new dangers to humanity in the form of the totalitarian state, modern technology, genetic engineering, the practical ethics movement, and radical environmentalism.
Kraynak and Tinder (2003: 14) continues to state that we live in a culture that does not recognize the intrinsic distinction of individual worth.
But what is this dignity, and what does it mean for missions with the destitute?

6.1What is dignity?

Dignity as a concept conveys deep meaning. It starts with human worth. Focus on the Family (an organization focusing on family ministry) captures this very well in their fourth guiding principle:

We believe that human life is of inestimable worth and significance in all its dimensions, including the unborn, the aged, the widowed, the mentally handicapped, the unattractive, the physically challenged and every other condition in which humanness is expressed from conception to the grave (Focus on the Family’s Fourth Guiding Principle).¹⁸

Seltser and Miller (1993), in discussing dignity and destitution, raise concerns about the basic rights and responsibilities human beings have and express toward one another. This also accords dignity a community perspective: true dignity also includes being treated with dignity by the community of which an individual is part. As Kraynak and Tinder (2003: 15) makes clear, an individual’s dignity is affirmed and strengthened when members of their family and community care for her or him in a weakened state.
Hence, it would appear that true dignity is only possible when people are connected and can relate, in other words when community exists. Dignity is an essentially social and interactive term which implies agreement with a particular status or set of rights, not only by oneself but also by others. To say someone is dignified, or possesses dignity, is to make a social, psychological, and missiological statement. We have dignity and worth because God created us so, and this dignity functions not only internally, but also in community.
From this viewpoint, being destitute threatens the essential dignity of human beings, undermining and often destroying their ability to be seen, and to see themselves, as worthwhile persons (Seltser and Miller, 1993:113). Among the destitute, dignity is that intangible sense of worth that people try to protect in the face of a myriad of factors trying to undermine and break down that dignity. It becomes a constant inner battle that often manifests itself in outward despondency. Destitute people would usually not use the term dignity when describing this battle, but most of them experience this battle daily, on a very personal level. Doing missions with the destitute requires that we understand their constant battle for dignity, that we treat them with dignity, and that we find God’s dignity with them, even in the midst of adverse circumstances.
This human worth translates into “self-worth” and self-respect. As such dignity implies a moral centre, because it is that element of the self and human spirit which is separable from our possessions, our jobs, our physical appearance, and our abilities. Dignity is something deeper than these material factors. In the words of Peter Berger (1986: 101): “Dignity, as against honor, always relates to the intrinsic humanity divested of all socially imposed roles or norms. It pertains to the self as such, to the individual regardless of his [sic] position in society.” Dignity directs our attention to the inner person, to the fundamental aspects of personhood.
Seltzer & Miller (1993:116) note that when we speak about the most fundamental and important aspects of human life, we often find ourselves focusing on self-respect and personal dignity as being the base points against which we evaluate the behaviour of others as well as our own actions. There are many tragedies in life, but when someone compromises their self-respect or loses their dignity as a human being, we are often moved to declare that something very fundamental has gone wrong. In extreme circumstances, such as destitution, it is not only the physical and material deprivation that should trouble us, but the breaking of a person’s spirit: the fact that the inner attitude, the essential person, is destroyed. It is the reduction of a person to purely physical circumstances that represents the greatest threat to dignity.
To act with dignity, to be aware of oneself as intrinsically valuable, can be experienced as a moral imperative. It is what defines one’s essential humanity. Equally essential, however, is the right of all human beings to be treated with dignity: in other words, to relate to them in a manner that allows them to develop an inner attitude, a world of dreams and hopes and intentions toward the future. To attack the dignity of others is to treat them as if they merely mirror their circumstances, as if they accept others’ interpretations of their lives and are subject to other peoples’ agendas.
Dignity also implies an inner intentionality. From the perspective of the individual, dignity is an expression of one’s intentionality toward the world. Dignity is threatened when one merely mirrors circumstances rather than acting upon them. People, who can experience their lives in terms of dignity, however restricted their environment and choices, are nevertheless pursuing a life project: Their interpretations of the world reflect their intentionality toward the future. They can make plans. People without dignity, in contrast, are individuals without a future, without a project, without hope. They act (or, at least, are perceived) as passive victims who have relinquished their lives to someone else or to circumstances they deem beyond their control (Seltzer & Miller, 1993:117).
This may constitute a major point of critique against the traditional way in which we have engaged the destitute; it is as if our shelters and projects tend to take away free choice, thereby undermining dignity.
Dignity may be perceived as something innate that God gives to all people; it is not dependent on external factors. Kraybill (2003:12) makes this point and adds that it is not based on the ability to care for ourselves or competence to complete a task. Being dependent upon others does not cause us to lose our dignity. Dignity is not a characteristic we can forfeit: it is an inseparable attribute woven into the fibre of our being. We possess dignity because we are created in the image of God.
Seltzer and Miller (1993:114) echo Earll in commenting that, whether we focus our attention on the capacity for moral reasoning, individual choice, interpersonal compassion, or some other understanding, there is a surprising consensus in our religious and philosophical traditions concerning a dignity in human life that is independent of any of the vagaries or accidents of social standing or personal action. There is an inner worth that is to be acknowledged, respected, and acted upon.
Dignity as a concept must be closely linked to SHALOM. In this sense dignity and SHALOM accompany each other closely. If a person experiences inner dignity which then manifests itself externally, she is in fact experiencing SHALOM, even if only to a limited degree. Ganzevoort and Heyen (2004:50-56), in writing about this SHALOM, observe:

The intended SHALOM or well-being thus takes many shapes, because the threats to personal identity and wellbeing are manifold. The type of threat provides the background against which a person’s life story seeks to construct a meaningful response. Life story strategies of escape, action, and reinterpretation should be seen as coping responses to these threats. Some life stories take the form of delivery from evil, closely resembling the narrower sense of salvation. Other life stories describe a fulfilled life and are closer to the broader sense of SHALOM. In still other life stories this SHALOM is only a vision or dream far from the present situation. In fact, in each life story we encounter areas of delivery, fulfillment, and misery.

As indicated earlier, although dignity refers to our inner worth, it remains something that is both internally experienced and externally validated. I truly “have” dignity only if two conditions are met: I must view and carry myself with dignity, and other people must respond to me as possessing dignity. If only the former condition is met, my dignity can neither be recognized nor validated, leading to the suspicion that among other people it is not, indeed, dignity at all. On the other hand, if only the latter condition is met, I will not be able to experience myself in terms of how others view me, a discrepancy that leads to inner uncertainty and self-doubt.