Empowerment - Right Question Institute

RQI shares an educational strategy that makes agency and empowerment possible. RQI’s strategy is focused on helping people a) ask their own questions and b) identify and participate in key decisions that affect them. These two skills are simple, yet transformative and universally powerful.

When frontline workers across fields share the strategy as part of their ongoing work, people become more engaged, more effective self-advocates, and better able to navigate systems and participate in a range of decisions that affect their lives and the lives of their families and communities.

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Partner With Us

RQI’s Empowerment Program provides resources, training, and technical support to organizations in a wide range of fields who in turn share RQI’s methods with the people they serve.

Read more below about our work across fields:

Legal Services

Social Services

Voter Engagement

Health Care

School-Family Partnerships

Other Applications

Stories from frontline workers in the field who use RQI’s strategy in their work.

Empowerment Spotlight: Adult educators as a catalyst for self-advocacy

Empowerment Spotlight: Adult educators as catalysts for self-advocacy

Empowerment Spotlight: Supporting formerly incarcerated people in Georgia

Empowerment Spotlight: Community co-creation and climate change in Kenya’s Rift Valley

Empowerment Spotlight: Insights on building trust and supporting client decision-making as a public defender

Voice in Decisions Technique (VIDT) - Have a voice in decisions that affect you

The Question Formulation Technique in 5 Steps

Partnering with Parents

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From Service Delivery to Capacity-Building: a Scalable Approach to Legal Empowerment

RQI's Legal Empowerment Program director, Naomi Campbell, writes in Social Innovations Journal about how a legal services social worker used RQI's resources to support a young mother, helping her build skills to advocate for herself and navigate the legal system.

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Frontline Staff as Social Innovators

Frontline staff people are largely untapped resources as potential social innovators. This article describes how one staff person strengthened the…

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The Potential of Social Service Agencies to Build Self-Advocacy Skills

Read the significance of building clients’ skills to advocate for themselves.

Radio Interview: The Right Question Strategy on ‘Choose to be Curious’

Lynn Borton, host of WERA radio's Choose to be Curious, has a conversation with RQI's Naomi Campbell about the ways curiosity and questions can become powerful tools for self-advocacy and agency.

The Right Questions for Legal Empowerment, with Naomi Campbell

‘A More Beautiful Question’: An Interview With Warren Berger

At the root of A More Beautiful Question is the idea that great things come from asking ambitious questions. I…

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[Video] Using the Question Formulation Technique (QFT) with Individuals

Parents and educators can use the Question Formulation Technique to have more productive conversations – in group settings or during one-on-one meetings. In this video, a home-school coordinator in New Hampshire works with a mother concerned about her son’s ability to graduate on time. She also meets with a young man who serves as guardian to his younger brother.

[Video] Using the Question Formulation Technique (QFT) in Groups

A team of teachers in Los Angeles and a facilitator in New Hampshire lead groups of parents through all the steps of the Question Formulation Technique (QFT) to think together about two scenarios: “Your child might be held back in the same grade for one more year” and “your child’s school environment.” The facilitator in New Hampshire describes the QFT to parents in this way: “You’re going to see how simple it is and how powerful it is as well.”

Video: Voices From the Field

This video — from RQI's earlier years — features voices of people who learned the Right Question Strategy.

International Access to Justice Forum 2025

RQI at the Cleveland Fed Policy Summit

Empowering Client Voices: SNAP Employment & Training National Forum

As a result of this workshop I plan to: [do] whatever it takes to get the information I need.

— Participant in a homeless shelter, Louisville, KY

I found ways to help my clients and litigants be better advocates for themselves. They can learn how to ask better questions and gain confidence not only in court but in other areas of their lives.

— RQI training participant, New York, NY

[The Right Question Strategy] allows people who don’t usually speak up to find their own voice. They don’t have to depend on me or others to speak for them… they speak for themselves.

— Faye Kennedy, Community Educator and Advocate, The Center for Collaborative Planning, Sacramento, CA

We can … empower clients not only in our consultations but also in the courtroom, where they often feel powerless. A lot of times clients don’t know they have the ability to ask questions—particularly in the courtroom. These skills will be valuable to give them a voice and to think about ways they can gather much-needed information.

— RQI training participant, New York, NY

What I appreciate about the Right Question Institute is its effort to meet people where they are. Equally important is its recognition that no system, no professionals, no individual dealing daily with large numbers of people can meet all their needs without the avid involvement of those whose needs are to be met…”

— Martha Minow, Professor, Harvard Law School, Cambridge, MA

Become a Catalyst for Agency and Empowerment

Where We Work

Empowerment Spotlight

Selected Resources

Events

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