| Building Rural Communities Collaborative
Location and Context
Louisiana is the poorest state in the nation. Today, 20% of Louisiana's residents live below poverty, with 40.6% of children under the age of six living in poverty - an increase of over 10% since 1983. There is a desperate need for comprehensive community development work in the state and in the region. Building Rural Communities Collaborative (BRCC) encompasses a 13-state area of the South: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia. The collaborative works in community development and sustainable agriculture, as agricultural communities are very much a part of rural community development. BRCC's work is focused primarily throughout an 18-parish (county) area of Central and South Louisiana: Acadia, Allen, Avoyelles, Catahoula, Concordia, Evangeline, Grant, Iberia, LaSalle, rural Lafayette, Natchitoches, Rapides, St. Landry, St. Martin, St. Mary, Vermilion, Vernon, and Winn.
Collaborative Structure and Strategy
Building Rural Communities Collaborative takes a holistic approach to community development - developing families through homeownership, education, job training, and public policy leadership; developing the economy of communities by creating new institutions and resources and access to affordable capital; and developing the health and well-being of communities through sustainable agriculture. Building Rural Communities crosses racial, gender, and economic barriers by working with all levels of the communities - low-wealth families (especially those headed by women), family farmers who often represent the formerly economically stable segment of rural communities, business leaders whose practices determine the availability of resources in communities, and policymakers whose policies impact the lives of individuals. Building Rural Communities fosters women's leadership, increases existing capacity of community development activity in the South, and increases ability of emerging non-profits to engage in long-term community development. Building Rural Communities shifts existing paradigms and builds bridges that allow the for-profit sector to learn the valuable lessons the inpoverished have to teach.
Leverage and Impact
Over the next year, BRCC will:
Build the finance infrastructure that connects poor families to affordable capital by recruiting four new bank partners to Southern Mutual Help Association's (SMHA's) Louisiana Rural Home Loan Partnership (LRHLP).
Help 700 individuals learn how to build their assets through Homeownership Counseling.
Enhance the Homeownership Counseling program to include education on credit repair and avoiding predatory lenders.
Continue to build partnerships with Department of Labor One Stops and technical colleges in the core area to prepare individuals for employment.
Create a business incubator for individuals completing Entrepreneurship Training.
Launch a micro-enterprise loan program for low-income, minority, and female business owners.
Assist farmers in developing and marketing value-added products.
Help build Southern Sustainable Agriculture Working Group's (SSAWG's) capacity to provide specific networking resources to organize commodity farmers in Louisiana.
Over the next three years, BRCC will:
Expand the geographic reach of BRCC's work to encompass four additional Louisiana parishes -- Avoyelles, Evangeline, Pointe Coupee, and Rapides.
Build BRCC's capacity to provide resources to sugar cane farmers in implementing a workable plan for keeping prime agricultural land in the hands of the farmers.
Assist commodity farmers in two Central Louisiana parishes move toward more sustainable practices.
Bring its asset building, education, and access to affordable capital work more deeply into Central Louisiana.
Help move family farmers from tenant farming to more land ownership.
With additional funding, BRCC has the potential to leverage over $30 million in the next three years.
A stronger BRCC means a stronger Louisiana Rural Home Loan Partnership (LRHLP). Prior to becoming a member of SMHA's LRHLP, banks invest in the capitalization of BRCC partner Southern Mutual Financial Services, Inc. (SMFS), the only Louisiana-based rural CDFI for housing. Increased lending capacity of SMFS, combined with the leadership of IBERIABANK and overall increased strength of the collaborative, can significantly increase the number of banks that invest in low-income rural families. SMFS's work through BRCC connects SMFS and IBERIABANK to local banks in Central Louisiana, creating opportunities to grow SMFS and to increase IBERIABANK's leadership role in community development investment outside the Acadiana region. SMFS's capacity must be built to a level that supports access to affordable capital in rural Louisiana.
BRCC builds communication between individual collaborative partners, resulting in new funding opportunities that previously were overlooked. Through BRCC partners, PRIME has identified potential USDA funding for its business incubator program, a source of government dollars that would otherwise not have been tapped. BRCC is planning to create a new lending product in that would use Small Business Administration loan funds in a new way, bringing SBA investment through SSAWG to a previously untapped market.
Funding of BRCC's work in Central Louisiana will leverage additional investment from collaborative partner The Rapides Foundation over the next five years. The Foundation's work with emerging community groups provides BRCC with anchor partners in Central Louisiana that will facilitate community development in the area. BRCC builds upon Rapides Foundation's investment by bringing added value to the work in Central Louisiana that helps enhance the Rapides investment. As successes are observed and interest in comprehensive community development grows, the number of organizations working in community development increases.
Funding will impel BRCC to grow stronger and achieve greater impact and scale. Where individual non-profit members are limited by organizational size and/or geographic location in where they can apply for funding, BRCC provides the geographic scale, skill and scope of work that can attract investment from large national funders.
Attracting new funding to rural Louisiana sets the stage for other national funders to increase their investment in this historically overlooked region of the poorest state in America.
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