Empowering Clientele in Transition

In the '80s, many rural Iowans found their lives confusing and difficult to manage. A variety of factors related to the farm crisis caused individuals and families to experience changes they'd never anticipated. These difficult economic and emotional transitions caused feelings of pain, isolation, alienation, helplessness, and powerlessness.

Iowa State University Extension began to address these needs through a series of programs such as ASSIST, Rural Concern, and the Rural Crisis Recovery Act Program. Through these programs, Iowa Extension educators gained knowledge and understanding of what it takes to empower people working through personal transitions. This article outlines the basic "learnings" that have come from these experiences. It describes the principles Extension educators found essential to the successes achieved in helping clientele. Today, these principles still apply and should be integral to any Extension program or activity designed to help individuals or families through a transitional process to a new beginning.

Learning #1. Education is an excellent strategy for empowering people. Through the educational process, individuals developed the power to act with others to bring about change. The following case illustrates this. One family about to lose the farm was referred to an Extension staff member. After several consulting sessions, the family made the following agency and community contacts-legal counsel, financial counseling, food bank, Department of Human Services, and Job Service. These contacts resulted in full-time, off-the-farm employment for one spouse and further education for the other while they were able to maintain a reduced farming operation.

Learning #2. Education is empowering when it starts with problems identified by the individuals. Through dialogue, Extension staff and clients participated as equals in co- discovering what was significant in the learning process. Solutions to problems were found by the families themselves as a result of interactive education and not of a directive educational process based on specialization. After contacts with different groups and organizations to discuss a variety of approaches, families developed their own plans of action to address legal problems, obtain emergency financial help, and implement new record keeping systems.

Learning #3. Listening is the most important skill an educator can develop and use. To identify the issues, the individual or family had to be an equal partner in problem identification and priority setting. From program evaluations, participants indicated the most significant help the staff provided was emotional support and nonjudgmental listening.

Learning #4. The most empowering role of an educator is that of facilitator. Through dialogue, the educator provided leadership by asking clients what they felt and saw and to describe the situation from their experience. The educator would then ask the individual or family to determine what problem they wanted to work on first and to develop a plan of action to address the problem. The educator didn't try to solve the problem for the individual or family. Staff reported performing the following functions with program participants: counselor, listener, friend, referral agent, coach, information provider, and link with other agencies and organizations.

Learning #5. Extension educators need to develop a new paradigm of education to empower people to take action. The results of these programs offer convincing evidence Extension can and should offer more than information transfer. Extension educators must move beyond providing research-based solutions to people's problems to become co-learners in a discovery process.

Stephen Viderman, executive director of the Jessie Smith Noyes Foundation, summarized these learnings. He said in the past our perspective was, " 'Listen, I'm speaking.' In the future, Extension's perspective needs to be, 'Speak, I'm listening.' "