Aim:  The concept of empowerment is often used to describe how individuals or groups try to establish control over their own lives. This study describes how a project “for” participants with intellectual disabilities changed into an empowerment-based project, a change initiated from below by participants who began to investigate how internalised oppression affected their lives and personal identities. Method:  Freire (1972) used the phrase “the wisdom of the oppressed” to emphasise the importance of the “power from within” discriminated and oppressed groups themselves. Through continuous observations and interviews over a three year period with participants and project leaders, we have been able to follow the development of the project.  Results and Conclusion:  Our conclusion is that: project activities are not enough; any real change must come from below and include processes of challenging and changing dominating discourses. We also argue for that an empowerment-based approach would give discriminated participants an opportunity to resist societal labelling as mentally retarded and to define their own personal identity.