Promote independent and powerful students
The health-promoting school improves young people’s abilities to act and generate change. It provides a setting within which they, working together with their teachers and others, can gain a sense of achievement.
The goal of empowerment is autonomy, by which is meant self-determination and control of one’s own work and life, thinking for oneself and being critical and independent, while being able to take full responsibility for the effects of one’s own actions. The goal is not just the quantity of attendance at a structured activity, but the quality and intensity of active involvement.
Youth health empowerment strategies promote children and young people as participants in all aspects of programme design and as advocates for community norm and policy change. Being strengthened to develop their own visions and ideas they are enabled to influence their lives and living conditions.