Empowerment Economics
Empowerment Economics is a culturally responsive multi-generational approach to financial capability in low-income Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) communities. Traditional financial capability focuses on wealth building at the individual level. In contrast, Empowerment Economics focuses on collective wealth building at the community level. Empowerment Economics creates transformational opportunities for building community self-determination and wealth.
Empowerment Economics provides a framework of various elements that have been effectively used in low-income AAPI communities.
What is Empowerment Economics?
The term Empowerment Economics was developed by researchers from the Institute of Assets and Social Policy (IASP) at Brandeis University’s Heller School for Social Policy and Management and was based on the financial capability practices of Hawaiian Community Assets (HCA). National CAPACD funded this work and continues to investigate and develop the idea of Empowerment Economics as a practice which is valuable to many AAPI communities and other communities of color.
If you would like to learn more about Empowerment Economics and how you can incorporate its principles into your work, please contact National CAPACD at rosalyn@nationalcapacd.org.
Cultural values and multigenerational communication strongly inform personal finance and wealth building practices in AAPI communities. Empowerment Economics most effectively serves AAPI communities by incorporating these elements into core service methods. In addition, Empowerment Economics emphasizes the role of trusted and known community leaders, peer-to-peer sharing, and shame-free dialogue on topics such as savings, debt, credit, and income. Empowerment Economics honors existing cultural practices and complex intersectional identities in defining and approaching financial security.
Innovations at these intersections represent exciting directions for transformative policy, practice and philanthropy.
Empowerment Economics-Providers
Empowerment Economics-Advocates
To learn more about Empowerment Economics, read our publications, contact our staff, and join us at conferences and webinars, including the following:
- Credit Builders Alliance Credit Building Symposium, June 2019
- Asset Funders Network Grantmaker Conference, May 2019
- People and Places, April 2019
- Eastern Sociological Society Annual Meeting, March 2019
- Asian Americans Advancing Justice Conference, March 2019
- Grantmakers Concerned with Immigrants and Refugees and Asset Funders Network Webinar, March 2019
- Prosperity Now Prosperity Summit, September 2018
- UCLA Asian American Studies Center, #NotCrazyRichAsians Webinar, June 2018
- National CAPACD Building CAPACD Convention, June 2018
- Credit Builders Alliance Credit Building Symposium, June 2018
- National Immigrant Integration Conference, December 2017
- Council for Native Hawaiian Advancement Convention, Oct 2017
KEY ELEMENTS OF EMPOWERMENT ECONOMICS
Hawaiian Community Assets’ approach to financial capability combines a set of promising practices that are embedded in everything they do and provide guidance to other organizations developing similar programs. These promising practices support organizations led by, and for, communities of color who seek to develop greater financial capability and cultural self-determination, while working to close the racial wealth gap.
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- Blending personal finance with cultural values from communities of color
Cultural values help inform our actions. Participants in financial capability programs adopt financial capability concepts if they can draw connections between their cultural values and the purpose behind and/or benefits of learned wealth-building strategies.
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- Offering financial tools and education through shame-free dialogue
Talking about money, especially family financial struggles, often evokes emotions and vulnerability. Program participants can engage with financial concepts and discussion of family finances in a safe and supportive environment with peers who can directly relate to their own experiences.
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- Integrating multigenerational programming and intergenerational learning
The kind of learning that stays with us often organically comes from our social and family networks. Program participants invited to participate in financial capability programming with their families may find the learning environment to be more accessible, motivating, and meaningful.
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- Utilizing a community-embedded approach
Families may be wary of financial institutions that they are unfamiliar with or from past negative experiences. Community-based organizations with established relationships and a trusted reputation are more likely to successfully reach and recruit participants who may benefit the most from financial capability programming.
Publications and Presentations
The Foundations for the Future Report is a case study focused on Hawaiian Community Assets (HCA), and demonstrates how the organization worked closely with its members and partners to build wealth in Native Hawaiian communities through financial capability programming. The authors introduce the term Empowerment Economics to categorize this process and expand upon current approaches to financial capability. On the surface, what HCA offers to families is a classic financial capability program. But digging deeper into their approach, we found the seeds of empowerment economics in how these services and educational opportunities are designed, implemented in the community, and spread across generations.
Empowerment Economics is a culturally rooted approach to financial capability and asset building that reflects a community’s ancestral cultural values and sociopolitical history with wealth. Empowerment economics, the intersection between financial capability and culturally relevant and multigenerational programming, is an asset development framework that seeks to build wealth and power.
The Innovations in Financial Capability Report builds upon the previous report, Foundations for the Future: Empowerment Economics in the Native Hawaiian Context, and features the financial capability work of over 40 of our member organizations and other AAPI serving organizations from across the US. The report finds that AAPI leaders across the country are adopting innovative multigenerational and culturally responsive approaches to financial capability programming, but they want and need more supports for their work.
The Evaluating Empowerment Economics report shows how Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander (AAPI) leaders are protecting and building wealth and power at the community level.