Lead Partner: Southern Mutual Help Association
Description
Southern Mutual Help Association (SMHA) was founded in 1969. It initially focused its efforts on targeted efforts to identify federal money available for specific empowerment programs ranging from ‘Head Start’ and parent education programs to a medical clinic in the cane fields that officials said wasn’t necessary, and that in fact drew 10,000 clients in its first year of operation.
Throughout the following years, SMHA leaders found themselves
constantly reinventing the organization as it evolved to meet community
needs. Discovering that poverty among the cane cutters was deep and intractable and virtually invisible, they sought to uncover it -- fighting heavy opposition from farm owners and the local power structure -- and discovered proof of hunger, malnutrition, and problems with health, environment and civil rights, the group won national publicity (including a major piece on “60 Minutes”) that shed a harsh light on the problem and began the slow process of change. In a similar way, they encouraged residents of a poverty-stricken section of Abbeville, La., a neighborhood without paved streets, sewers or city water, to organize and protest and seek publicity until the city leaders finally grudgingly extended these most basic urban services.
But SMHA’s modern course was set from what appeared to be a very small beginning during the late 1980s, when an elderly woman from
the poor, rural Four Corners area came and asked for help repairing
her house. Rather than simply help her, the group encouraged her to
seek help for herself and her neighbors within her own community,
starting by encouraging her church to get involved in rebuilding the
neighborhood’s dilapidated housing stock. The church declined, arguing that the need was too great and its resources too small.
So a group of neighbors got together instead, and did the job themselves. At a fiery neighborhood gathering, organization leaders “held up a mirror to them,” Bourg said, pointing out that it was their work that had built the community’s churches, their work that cut the sugar cane and made the farm owners wealthy. “They reminded
themselves not how weak they were but how strong they were,” Bourg said. That night, the Four Corners Mutual Help Association was born. SMHA made a decision: They would wean themselves from the federal grants that had shaped their policies, grants that brought in money and programs but that tended to force those programs into a model that discouraged empowerment and extenuated poverty rather than ending it.
“The Building Rural Communities programs mobilise communities and individuals to renovate and rebuild their homes”
Operating under a new strategic plan that explicitly seeks to empower by creating wealth and keeping it in local hands, the group soon added two more MHA’s, created an umbrella group, the Federation of Self Help Associations, to band them together into a larger political
voice. Without absolutely abandoning the traditional community organizing philosophy that issues must rise from the community, SMHA successfully shapes development by creating programs that guide the local groups in several critical directions.
Its Environmental and Agriculture programs, for instance, work not only with cane workers and fishers but also with the farm owners themselves to build communication that helps ensure decent treatment for the farm workers AND encourages the farmers to move toward sustainable
techniques.
The Building Rural Communities programs mobilize communities and individuals to renovate and rebuild their homes, using selfhelp practices and leveragin federal, state and private funds (including an agreement with local banks to provide 1 percent loans secured by certificates of deposit put up by the MHAs themselves). An innovative “lumber recycling plant” processes, cleans and planes and removes nails from boards taken from houses too dilapidated to rebuild, and reuses that lumber to repair or replace other houses. Another innovative approach, the “Skill Transfer Center,” teaches residents basic carpentry and home-repairs techniques so they can keep their own houses in repair without having to seek expensive private-sector aid or charity assistance.
A “peer review” committee, akin to a Grameen bank but innovated independently here, sets up community members to review the needs and capabilities of borrowers seeking low-interest loans.
These descriptions only scratch the surface; the real story lies in the visible changes that are brightening the face of St. Mary Parish: new & better houses; new shops and businesses providing needed services and jobs; and a heightened sense of pride that manifests itself in groups of citizens that have sprung up to join the march: The Council of Community Leaders . . . 100 Concerned Men . . . and the new St. Mary Parish Housing Council, an umbrella organization bringing together all five of the community’s non-profit low-cost housing organizations to give the SMHA concept real power by focusing ALL the area’s housing development on self-help and self-reliance.
In one innovative concept worth copying, the organization aggressively seeks “socially responsible investors” who will invest substantial amounts in the organization with the expectation of a 1, 2 or 3 percent return.
SMHA places this money in “safe” investments like treasury bonds at a higher return, and is free to use the “spread” to bolster its cash flow. It’s a creative idea, but what else would you expect from a creative organization like this?
Over the past ten years, our work has evolved to include alarger geography, a more diverse constituency, and many more innovative products and programs. Our early work informed the expansion of our work to reach more families by changing the systems that keep families
in poverty. What began as selfhelp housing efforts in a few small rural villages has become the multi-parish (county) Louisiana Rural Home Loan Partnership that has helped 210 low-wealth families across rural Louisiana achieve first-time homeownership. We created a community development bank that has made nearly $4 million in affordable capital available to low wealth families and small businesses. In late 2005, SMHA launched its Rural Recovery Response to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita to help rebuild 11 rural parishes impacted by one or both storms – as of October, 2007 SMHA has helped 780 families, 80 farmers, 74 businesses, and nine churches recover from the storms.
SMHA’s staff has grown to 13 and our budget to over $4 million, over 77% of which is expenses associated with our Rural Recovery Response. SMHA receives no government funding for our work.
'In one innovative concept worth copying, the organization aggressively seeks “socially responsible investors” who will invest substantial amounts in the organization with the expectation of a 1, 2 or 3 percent return.'
Contact Details
3602 Old Jeanerette RoadNew Iberia,La. 70563USA tel: (318) 367-3277fax: (318) 367-3279Website: http://www.southernmutualhelp.org/