SMHA's Strategies

Overall and Programmatic

Overall Strategies

1. Seeing the big picture

Pervasive poverty needs comprehensive answers. SMHA helps people build wealth in their communities, enrich their educational opportunities, assume an active role in public policy formation, improve their health, and care for their land, air and water. Our vision is holistic and our actions are strategic. We invest in people because, above all, we recognize that human and community development go hand-in-hand.

2. Building Innovative Pathways

We find ways of tackling what seem like insurmountable challenges and transforming them into win-win situations all around. SMHA historically has guided communities out of despair towards a future that people envision and in which they believe.

3. Creating New Models of Leadership

The communities of southern Louisiana are heirs to a tradition of "plantationism," in which individuals have been caught in a cycle of dependency and taught not to question figures of authority. SMHA develops an understanding of grassroots leadership based on empowerment and not power over, mutual respect in the place of deference, and cooperation rather than conflict.

4. Reversing a Prevalent Mentality of Service

SMHA moves communities from a service-based outlook ("what can you do for me?") to valuing asset-based development ("what do we have that makes us able to do for ourselves and have a say about what happens to us?") and community building ("this is good because it makes our community better.")

5. Drawing Connections Between Public Policy and People's Lives

We strive to overcome the disconnect that separates citizens from the decision-making processes that impact their lives. SMHA provides learning opportunities for citizens, communities and policy makers to visualize and implement a new model of how we make public policy and are accountable for our decisions.

6. Bringing Unlikely Coalitions Together on "Common Ground"

SMHA has a history of connecting wealth and resources to people and families. We seek to forge ties across all segments of communities. We created fruitful partnerships among farmers and field workers, environmentalists and fishers, low-wealth families and bankers. Our partners recognize their shared core values, and together they nurture a vision of prosperity for their communities.

7. Franchising a "Good Thing"

Our work is given the stamp of approval by new communities who ask to be a part of it. We help them replicate and expand programs based on strategies that work.

Programmatic Strategies

SMHA has three time-tested strategies that, working together, help low-wealth families, women, and people of color gain a foothold in the mainstream economy: asset-building, education, and policy and advocacy work. SMHA will put these time-tested strategies to work as it organizes and leads a massive Rural Recovery Response to help rural south Louisiana communities rebuild after Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita.

Asset-Building

SMHA connects families to affordable capital in order to help them accumulate assets and build their family wealth through the Louisiana Rural Home Loan Partnership (LRHLP), Souther Mutual Financial Services, Inc. (SMFS), and our work to help traditional family fishers find niche markets and with farmers to gain ownership of the land they farm.

Education

We give families the education they need to improve their financial health and family weath through homeowner education, predatory lending education, and technical assistance and access to information.

Advocacy for Policy Change

We challenge the policies that keep families from success while we build families’ capacity to impact policy change. We created the Public Policy Leadership Institute (Without Walls) to increase civic involvement, primarily among families in economically distressed areas. We help families recognize their power and exercise their right to be heard in policy debates that impact their lives.

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