Oxfam Partners Have Deep Roots in Rural Communities Hit Hard by Katrina
9 September 2005
Oxfam's partners in Mississippi and Louisiana work with farming and fishing families many of whom have few resources to fall back on when disaster strikes. Katrina has devastated many of those families.
While the full weight of Katrina’s destruction is still unfolding for much of the nation, for many rural residents in some of the nation’s poorest states—Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana—the storm’s impact was immediate and blunt: The hurricane robbed them of homes, jobs, and any semblance of security.
Oxfam America is now working to help some of those residents to recover from that devastating blow. Through local organizations, we have supported economic and community development in the region for 15 years. But the storm has also added a new dimension to Oxfam America’s efforts in the Gulf Coast states: emergency relief.
For the first time in the agency’s 35-year history, Oxfam America has launched a major relief program within the United States. We are helping to fill the gaps left by an inadequate government response in poor communities, particularly those in rural areas which are often the last to receive disaster assistance.
Oxfam America has awarded an initial round of emergency grants to three of its long-term partners in the hurricane-affected region: the Southern Mutual Help Association, the Mississippi Association of Cooperatives, and the Federation of Southern Cooperatives. We have also made a grant to a fourth group, a local housing organization called Vision of Hope, that is helping people purchase supplies to make their damaged homes rainproof. Here is a look at who our partners are and what they do.
Southern Mutual Help Association
Founded in 1969, the Southern Mutual Help Association grew out of the harsh conditions workers faced in the sugarcane fields of Louisiana. Today, the association focuses its energy on helping to turn distressed rural communities into strong, prosperous ones. Its tools include organizing, promoting the equitable management of resources, and partnerships.
“Trillions of dollars have been spent fighting poverty in America, and yet poverty has grown and the gap between the rich and poor has widened,” says the association. “Rural communities are increasingly marginalized.”
To combat that, the association has launched a variety of initiatives, including a rural home loan partnership program that helps poor families get loans to buy or build homes. The association’s Public Policy Leadership Institute works to encourage marginalized citizens to become involved in their communities, and a youth development program aims to nurture the next generation of leaders. Additionally, the association works closely with people whose lives and jobs are dependent on the rural environment, particularly those in farming and fishing communities.
The association’s constituents represent many facets of rural Louisiana: low-income families, fishing families, and sugarcane farm families. Oxfam America has worked with the organization for more than 11 years—since 1994. Prior to the hurricane, our involvement focused on the sugarcane farmers’ efforts to diversify their crops and develop new marketing strategies so that they could develop the resources to hold onto their land. Oxfam America has also supported the association’s work with marginalized fishing communities as well as its community development work on housing.
“We need to end poverty instead of endlessly servicing it,” said Lorna Bourg, the association’s executive director, in the days following the hurricane. Katrina has made that job both more challenging and more urgent.
Mississippi Association of Cooperatives
Established in 1977, the Mississippi Association of Cooperatives (MAC) is an association of 15 cooperatives engaged in agriculture, marketing, and community development. MAC is the state-level affiliate of another longtime Oxfam partner, the Federation of Southern Cooperatives.
MAC is dedicated to helping poor African-Americans improve their ability to earn a living. For its farmer members, MAC also offers guidance on improved production, access to markets, grant applications, and ways to increase their income. MAC works in counties where unemployment is high and family incomes are low.
Oxfam America has been funding MAC programs since 2001, though our relationship with the organization stretches many years beyond that. At the moment, we are working with MAC on two projects. The most recent is a two-pronged grant. One piece of the grant will fund an organizational assessment and strategic planning process for MAC. The second will help fund MAC’s collaboration with Delta State University to organize a conference on Mississippi farmers’ responses to changes in the global economy.
We are also supporting MAC’s work with a farmers’ co-op—the North Delta Produce Growers’ Cooperative—to develop value-added processing and regional marketing strategies.
In the past, with a grant provided by Oxfam America, MAC established a revolving loan fund for four cooperatives participating in a project with Massachusetts-based Red Tomato to market seedless watermelons to supermarket chains in the Northeast. As a result, the co-ops are now able to receive short-term loans to pay for packing, hired hands, and storage until they get paid by the supermarkets through Red Tomato.
“In today’s global markets, small farmers need to seek out niche markets that pay them high enough prices to keep their farms viable,” said Minor Sinclair, Oxfam America’s director of US regional programs. “MAC helps its members do that and, in the process, retain a larger share of the food dollar.”
Federation of Southern Cooperatives
An Oxfam America partner since 1994, the Federation of Southern Cooperatives is a technical assistance and advocacy organization of African-American farmers and landowners. The federation believes that grassroots organizing and collaboration across racial and cultural lines are keys to the survival of family farmers worldwide. Here in the United States, African-American farmers suffer from problems caused by a system of corporate agriculture compounded by discrimination on the part of private and public agencies—particularly the US Department of Agriculture.
The federation works with small farmers in the southeastern United States and pursues initiatives in West Africa, Jamaica, the Virgin Islands, and Cuba. Its objective is to share experiences and technologies that will enable family farmers and rural communities to withstand the onslaught of globalization and gain more control over their food systems. The federation creates direct marketing links that will benefit both the farmer and the consumer and enable them to survive globalization and trade as they exist today.
We are now funding the federation’s advocacy work on U.S. agriculture and trade policy. The federation is undertaking this work as part of a coalition that includes three other partners: the National Family Farm Coalition, the Rural Coalition, and the Missouri Rural Crisis Center.
Oxfam America also plans to make another grant that will help develop a regional marketing system. This system will enable African-American farmers and cooperatives to market their products collectively and thereby successfully compete with larger-scale producers in mainstream markets.
“The Federation is the largest organization in the country helping African-American farmers cope with technical, social, and policy issues for several decades,” said Sinclair. “Dealing with the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina is a natural role for the federation to play, and we know they are in this for the long haul.”
