“EmPower Us! addresses the root cause of the five global “dis-eases”; climate change, inequity, inequality for women and minorities, otherness, and the global disease COVID-19. They begin with a degradation of values and result in the breach of trust we see. We are born hardwired to universal values, like love, justice, peace or equality. Trust is rebuilt by living these values. Before we are EmPower(ed) we have to be InPower(ed). Self-reflection and self-assessment are essential for opening new insights such as replacing greed and self-interest with generosity and empathy. Doing so, we discover that we cannot change a community (nation, planet) until we change ourselves.
The book helps us to recognize where we are, not where we’re not …what we can be and must be… challenging people to look forward instead of backward. It attempts to “touch the personal spot” within each of us- our character, our core values. If you touch that spot, people blossom overnight like flowers in a dessert after a rare rain. They then realize the need to look at other people with compassion; people who are impoverished, starving, victims of genocide and racial injustice, as well as those who by their choices and actions, knowingly or unknowingly, are destroying the planet.
It invokes remembering that our clarity, our strength, and our success comes and is sustained when we accept that we are fruits from the same one seed. Remembering that when we truly have the confidence, the courage and the humility to want for ‘the other’ what we want for ourself, then we will open the door to just and equitable solutions to problems, and the means to positively address opportunities. Step by step, we realize that universal values can act as catalytic forces for transformation, generating a safe and secure sustainable future.”