Winner of the Social Research Award for 2025

The study aimed to uncover the obstacles to practicing community empowerment as an entry point to achieve social development, and in order to suggest a practical model, the qualitative method was adopted using the "Grounded theory" to achieve the study goals. The theoretical background of the study confirmed the existence of a conflict both at the theoretical and application levels, and dealing with it in previous studies was limited to a few aspects or a specific community group, a limit that the current study tried to address by tackling the theme in general without considering a specific topic or a specific community group. The study reached the theory of "obstacle triangle and a practicing model", It is a complex and multi-dimensional theoretical concept based on three basic categories that represent the obstacles related to social development and that must be avoided to achieve the practicing model. The obstacles are cultural and methodological, skill and educational, and procedural and implementation, and have been relied upon to build the practice model for community empowerment. The study recommended that center for community empowerment to support practicing empowerment to community development must be established, so that it is supervised by the Deputy Ministry for Social Development to achieve the goals of the National Transformation Program related to the role of local communities in achieving their role in the development industry and achieving its sustainability.