Empowerment Institute is the world's premiere consulting and training organization specializing in the methodology of empowerment. Its state-of-the-art empowerment tools have been applied over the past twenty-five years to achieve measurable behavior change at the community and organizational level. Its clients consist of public sector agencies, corporations and non profits. The following represents its specific skill set.

• behavior change program design
• voluntary participation strategies
• large scale system change
• organizational transformation
• community organizing
• transformative leadership training
• empowerment coaching
• community and organizational visioning
• replicable systems design and transfer
• peer support system design
• empowerment-based group facilitation
• empowerment-based team building
• program assessment and measurement
• program management
• innovation diffusion strategy design
• social architecture
• transformational technologies
• national and community public policy
• social marketing
• public sector partnership development
• public sector financing

Empowerment Institute’s programs have received many awards including Renew America’s top honor for community participation, EPA’s environmental quality award, and citations from the President's Council on Sustainable Development, U.S. Department of Energy, Oregon Department of Energy and a number of state environment and energy offices.

An In-Depth Look at Empowerment Institute’s
Core Competencies:

Proven behavior change and participation tools: Empowerment Institute has developed a highly effective set of tools for behavior change and voluntary participation. Working with over 150,000 people, these empowerment tools have produced significant and measurable behavior change and participation in a wide diversity of communities and organizations. These tools include behavior change program design, peer-to-peer recruitment, peer support group meetings, leadership training and empowerment coaching. These empowerment tools have been continually refined over many years and at this point are considered by many the state-of-the-art. One major academic research study reported that this model ‘is unsurpassed’ in changing behavior.

A replicable community or organizational large system transformation model: Empowerment Institute has developed a proven, replicable and customizable system for implementing a community, regional, national or organization-wide transformation process. It includes design of the social architecture for large scale system change; social diffusion strategy for taking the behavior change program to scale; and design and transfer of replicable project management systems. Depending on the clients choice, Empowerment Institute either develops the behavior change project and then transfers it to them or implements the project directly.

Substantial experience working with public sector organizations, corporations and non-profits: Empowerment Institute has over two decades of experience working with public sector organizations, corporations and non profits in the area of behavior change and voluntary participation strategies. It has consulted, designed and delivered programs addressing a diversity of topics including leadership development, organizational transformation, education, environment, safety, health, and neighborhood revitalization. Empowerment Institute has also designed measurement and assessment tools that help organizations increase their effectiveness in program implementation.

About David Gershon

David Gershon, founder and CEO of Empowerment Institute, is one of the world’s foremost authorities on behavior-change and large-system transformation, and applies this expertise to issues requiring community, organizational, and societal change. His clients include cities, government agencies, large organizations, and social entrepreneurs. He has addressed a wide diversity of issues, ranging from low carbon lifestyles, livable neighborhoods, and sustainable communities to organizational talent development and cultural transformation. Over the past thirty years the empowerment programs he has designed have won many awards, and a major academic research study described them as “unsurpassed in changing behavior.”

David used this empowerment proficiency to organize at the height of the cold war, in partnership with the United Nations Children’s Fund and ABC Television, one of the planet’s first major global consciousness-raising initiatives—the First Earth Run. Building on his background as the Director of the Lake Placid Olympic Torch Relay, he used the mythic power of relaying a torch of peace around the world to engage the participation of twenty-five million people in sixty-two countries, the world’s political leadership and, through the media, an estimated 20 percent of the planet’s population in an act of global unity. Millions of dollars were also raised as part of this event to help UNICEF provide care for the neediest children of the world.

Gershon is the author of eleven books, including his recently published Social Change 2.0: A Blueprint for Reinventing Our World, winner of the 2009 National Best Books Award, and Low Carbon Diet: A 30 Day Program to Lose 5,000 Pounds, winner of the 2007 “Most Likely to Save the Planet” Independent Publisher Book Award. He co-directs Empowerment Institute’s School for Transformative Social Change which empowers social entrepreneurs and change agents from around the world to design and implement cutting edge social innovations. He has lectured at Harvard, MIT, and Duke and served as an advisor to the Clinton White House and the United Nations on behavior change, community empowerment and sustainability issues.

Public Sector and Utility Clients

Arlington County, VA
Bend City Water Department, OR
Chattanooga-Hamilton County Air Pollution Control Agency, TN
Chattanooga Area Regional Transit Authority, TN
City of Chattanooga Department of Public Works, TN
City of Columbus Health Department, OH
City of Harrisburg, PA
City of Issaquah Resource Conservation Office, WA
City of Kansas City Department of Environmental Management, MO
City of Madison Recycling Office, WI
City of Minneapolis, MN
City of Portland Bureau of Environmental Services, OR
City of Portland Department of Transportation, OR
City of Portland Water Bureau, OR
City of Portland Energy Office, OR
City of Portland Office of Sustainable Development, OR
City of Philadelphia Municipal Energy Office, PA
City of Philadelphia Water Department, PA
City of Philadelphia Department of Streets Recycling, PA
City of Philadelphia Department of Public Health, PA
Dane County Solid Waste Management Authority, WI
Deschutes County Solid Waste Department, OR
Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)
King County Solid Waste Division, WA
King County Waste Water Treatment Division, WA
King County Water and Land Resources Division, WA
Madison Gas and Electric, WI
Madison Metropolitan Sewerage District, WI
Madison Metro, WI
Maine Office of Economic Development
Mid-America Regional Council, MO
New York City Dept of Information Technology and Telecommunications
New York City Office of Emergency Management
New York State Department of Transportation
Oregon Department of Energy
Oregon Department of Environmental Quality
Oregon Department of Transportation
PacifiCorp (Electric Utility Company), OR
Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development
Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection
Puget Sound Air Pollution Control Agency, WA
Rockland County Solid Waste Management Authority, NY
Solid Waste Authority of Central Ohio
Town of Worthington, OH
Town of Highland, NY
United Nations Environment Programme
United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF)
United Water
U.S. Department of Energy — Center for Excellence in Sustainable Development
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency — Region III
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency — Global Climate Change Division
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency — Environmental Justice Program
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency — Office of Mobile Sources
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency — Urban and Economic Development Division
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency — Office of Environmental Education
Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation

Corporate and Non-Profit Clients

Dozens of corporations and non-profits have been trained or formed strategic partnerships to implement Empowerment Institute’s methodology. Some of the larger or more well know clients include:

ABC Television
Aerosmith, Inc.
American Express
A T & T
Best Buy
Bull
Ciba Geigy
Coca Cola
Costco
Cray Research
Deloitte
Earth Day International
Honeywell
Jaycees International
Junior League
Lake Placid Olympic Organizing Committee
3M
NBC Television
Ohio State University
Rotary International
Shell
Target
University of Pennsylvania
University of Wisconsin
Whole Foods Markets
World Bank

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For more information contact:

Empowerment Institute
PO Box 428
Woodstock, New York 12498

Tel: 845-688-5480

About Global Action Plan (GAP)

GAP is the nonprofit research arm of Empowerment Institute. It conducts research on the cutting edge of behavior change, public participation, and community empowerment. The GAP network consists of public sector agencies, non profit organizations and individual practitioners in seventeen countries around the world. Members of this network have won many prestigious awards for the innovation and effectiveness of the empowerment methodology.