I am a student from Hong Kong. English is only my second language. There are tutors recently saying that there is no such expression and usage as
"To empower someone with skills/knowledge/ability etc. (to do sth)"
Because they can't find it in dictionaries like OALD, LONGMAN, CAMBRIDGE etc so they consider it as invalid. But I certainly discovered such usage by means of corpus although the frequency is relatively low comparing with " empower someone to do sth."
The following are the questions that I would like to ask:
(1)Is this acceptable and common for native speakers to use such expression as "To empower someone with skills/knowledge/ability etc. (to do sth)" even though we can't find it in some of the most authoritative dictionaries?
(2)one of the tutor said that if being so, "to equip someone with something" will be sufficient enough to replace the meaning "To empower someone with skills/knowledge/ability etc. (to do sth)" with ease. Is that a valid statement?
The following are some of the examples:
"This is an essential cause, now that the European Union seeks to empower itself with political strength and carry weight in the international arena."
"ESCAP has started a project that aims to provide such evidence on effective community-based programmes to empower youth with life skills to make informed and responsible decisions and foster their positive health behaviour."
"Particularly in the area of collective and popular art practice, for instance, one of the primary objectives of the research may be to empower socially marginalized research participants with a public voice and visibility enabling them to challenge the status quo."
"Our dream is to have every child enjoy equal right and opportunity to be educated,empower themselves with knowledge and create a decent life. May the light of civilization shine brightly over every child’s path to the future."
Best Answer
Here is a collection of quotations using "empowered with the ability":
All but one relate to empowering a person or people. They are sufficiently diverse and (mostly) recent to support the view of acceptability, assuming this is consistent with what the OP is looking for. (If it's not I'll delete it.)