Southern Mutual Help Association (SMHA)
Lorna Bourg, Executive Director and Co-Founder
Sr. Anne Bizalion, President and Co-Founder
Helen Vinton, Life Quality Coordinator
Craig Mathews, Housing Development Coordinator
Clementine Matthews, Community Development Coordinator
Lurcy Marcaux, Construction Director
Andrea Ordodi, Executive Secretary
5002 Old Jeanerette Road
New Iberia, La. 70560
(318) 367-3277
(318) 367-3279 fax

There's no clear line between land and sea here in Acadiana -- Cajun country -- where the broad Mississippi's delta country stretches out into the Gulf of Mexico in a marshy mix of swamps and sloughs and coulees and black-water bayous separated by scrubby trees and broad fields of sugar cane. This is a poor land, and getting poorer, where it's estimated that 47 percent of the population of western St. Mary's Parish (county) lives below the poverty line, and where it's said that 98,000 men, women and children lost their steady source of income during the past decade to mechanization in the cane fields, and another 10,000 subsistence fishers have seen their income slashed by restrictive state legislation that limits commercial fishing. In some very real ways, this region reminds me of Appalachia: A place of great natural beauty and a proud people with a long history, who face serious and ongoing problems because there's little wealth in their community and few reasonable options to create wealth or bring it in.

The Southern Mutual Help Association, however, has been working for more than a quarter of a century now to try to change this harsh reality by inspiring people to work together to help themselves. SMHA's roots go back to the War on Poverty and the Great Society; Lorna Bourg, a local woman with deep roots in Acadiana, and Sister Anne Bizalion, a Dominican nun from France, helped form the areas first Community Action Agency in 1965, operating from the idealistic view that the idea behind the program was, as Bourg says, "not to SERVICE poverty but to END poverty." They broke with the CAA, however, when it shifted from a change orientation to become, in essence, a source of patronage jobs to be awarded by a corrupt state government; losing their jobs (with 150 other employees) in a shakeup, they founded SMHA in 1969, initially focusing 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, shaming the church leaders and teaching themselves a valuable lesson. 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. We told them we'd help; if they took one step, we'd take two with them, but if they slept, we'd snore. And, we told them that when the next community wanted to start a Mutual Help Association, they would have to agree to mentor them." Set on this new course, 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.

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 MHAs in the towns of Sorrell and Glencoe; and with two more smaller efforts, created an umbrella group, the Federation of Self Help Associations, to band them together into a larger, louder 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. They've made considerable inroads in eliminating the worst abuses of pesticides that had killed millions of fish and sickened thousands of workers and residents; now they're teaching farmers to recycle the sugar-cane stalks and leaves that had once been burned in huge, smoky fires.

The Building Rural Communities programs mobilize communities and individuals to renovate and rebuild their homes, using self-help practices and leveraging 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 houses, 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.

SMHA, like most effective self-reliance organizations, gets a lot done with a little. Its staff of seven works out of a historic building, a little "Cajun Great House" that, true to the group's philosophy, it purchased cheap and dilapidated and moved down the bayou to its new site where they renovated it with their own labor and that of the community. The group's budget last year was a little under $900,000, about half of that being federal pass-through housing money. 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?

All the feature stories on @GRASS-ROOTS.ORG's pages are reported and written by Robin Garr, a prize-winning journalist who has visited more than 500 innovative grassroots programs in all 50 states since 1990.

Browse his book, Reinvesting In America, at Amazon.com.

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