SMHA's Impact

We Create New Institutions

SMHA leadership creates new organizational entities that change systems. We have founded and co-founded at least fifteen institutions that have far-reaching implications for rural community development, sustainable agriculture and biodiversity, health and education, innovative investments in low-income markets, and the development of the non-profit sector.

• SMHA leadership co-founded RAFI-USA to promote food security through family farms and sustainable agriculture across the nation.
• A four-community Federation of Self-Help Associations in one of Louisiana’s most distressed rural areas cultivated leadership, strengthened youth and families, helped its members find a voice in public policy, promoted health awareness, and improved opportunities in education.
• SMHA has piloted a national initiative in new homeownership. The Louisiana Rural Home Loan Partnership unites local banks, the Rural Housing Service and other partners to create blended mortgage products for low-wealth families. The Louisiana RHLP has invested nearly $10 million dollars in new markets as of October 26, 2004. As of 2002, the national RHLP program had leveraged nearly $400 million.
• SMHA served on the advisory board of the creation of the University of New Orleans International Center for Non-Profit Leadership, which will lead the way in training emerging leaders for the non-profit sector on a global scale
• SMHA will play a key leadership role through its Rural Recovery Response in forging new public policies to help cope with the devastation wreaked by Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita.

We Forge New Policies

SMHA finds strategic solutions that institutionalize change. We involve citizens in policy formation that impacts the life and health of their communities.

• Farm Worker Rights: SMHA's legal advocacy efforts historically brought landmark court decisions in civil rights and labor issues.
• Farm Policy and Sustainable Agriculture: SMHA co-founded the 13-state Southern Sustainable Agriculture Working Group to redirect resources and policy in support of sustainable agriculture and family farmers.
• Health: SMHA trained a lead nurse practitioner who worked with the Louisiana nurse practitioners to reverse policies that impede their ability to reach people in rural areas across lines of gender, race and class.
• Housing: The eleven-parish (county) Louisiana Rural Home Loan Partnership creates avenues for private-sector investment in low-income communities. We are changing the way the USDA does housing in America.

We Develop Effective Leadership and Learning Opportunities

SMHA cultivates emerging leaders and creates contexts for them to grow and teach others.

• Seven SMHA Critical Difference Scholarships for young people whose families have been farm workers in the sugar cane industry have graduated: three pre-medical students, one pre-law student, and three teachers. One more will graduate in December of 2004 in psychology.
• Southern Mutual Help's Homeownership Counseling classes provide essential guidance and resources to families to be successful homeowners. At the Skill Transfer Center donated by IBERIABANK, over 150 families have learned how to do basic household maintenance and repairs.
• SMHA helps both family farmers and traditional fishers to learn organizing and entrepreneurial skills. We advise a coalition of farmers in developing a business plan for developing and marketing value-added sugar cane products and retention of farm land for farming.

We Create New Wealth

Southern Mutual Help Association helps create prosperity and attract investments.

• Through the Louisiana Rural Home Loan Partnership, The USDA Rural Housing Service and Federal Home Loan Bank of Dallas banks have invested nearly $10 million in low-wealth communities.
• SMHA acts as a business and organizing consultant to a sugar mill cooperative developing value-added products from sugar. These economic initiatives allow Louisiana farmers to stay on equal footing in view of world markets.
• SMHA has brought small commercial fishers into dialogue with two regional "farmers" markets interested in expanding to seafood. The traditional fishers began active negotiations for direct marketing opportunities that would bring them fair prices for their catches.

We Build Institutional Capacity and Leverage Our Partnerships

SMHA increases the capacity of institutions across all three sectors to invest effectively in low-wealth communities. Our collaborators grow stronger through their work with us.

• As one of ten winners of the Fannie Mae Foundation's Sustained Excellence Award, SMHA works with others to develop innovative financing tools and increase the impact of the non-profit sector.
• SMHA's leadership helps other non-profits grow stronger internally and extend the scope of their impact. As former treasurer of the Southern Regional Council and chair of the audit-finance committee, SMHA's Executive Director worked with a financial consultant from the Ford Foundation to rebuild the capacity of the SRC.
• We build the capacity of local banks to reach new markets. As our originating partner bank in the Louisiana RHLP, IBERIABANK has written mortgages to over 50 low-wealth families, encouraging five more banks to join the partnership.

We Give Face and Voice to the Faceless and Voiceless

SMHA paves a way for people to tell their own stories. We bring the attention of the nation and policy makers to the most marginalized communities.

• Our effective class action and constitutional rights lawsuits highlighted the deplorable living conditions of sugar cane workers and insured their rights to free association, decent housing and healthcare, and $1.25 million in back wages.
• Our work has been featured in numerous national and local television news programs, including CBS, CNN, NBC and PBS, as well as local news channels. In 1978, CBS broadcast a 60 Minutes documentary on SMHA's work. A national audience glimpsed life "behind the cane curtain" for thousands of field workers.
• New homeowners from the RHLP were featured in Rural LISC's films Stand Up for Rural America and A Place in the Country. SMHA's work opened and closed these documentaries as a demonstration of the power of hope in the lives of America's rural communities

We Build Bridges Others Can Cross to Common Ground

SMHA fosters dialogue among different groups and finds solutions based on core values and common concerns. We forge ties across all segments of the community.

• SMHA builds bridges among farmers, farm workers, and environmentalists to find solutions that increase health and prosperity for all members of our communities.
• We connect low-income families with bankers and financial institutions in mutually fruitful relationships.
• SMHA has brought disparate groups of small commercial fishers together to lay plans for holistic resource management that will sustain their way of life.