West End Girls (and Boys)

I spent two days in New Iberia, Louisiana last week visiting folks from the Southern Mutual Help Association and the West End Council of Neighborhood Associations. This part of the world is Cajun Country, with lots of delicious gulf shrimp, rich gumbo, and fried catfish on the menu; Tabasco’s Avery Island hot sauce plant sits down the road a bit; and Bayou Teche meanders through the town lined with beautiful plantation-era houses and melancholy live oak trees. As pretty as downtown was, the real action is happening down in the West End.

Led by Robby Bethel, Eva Lewis, and Marlon Lewis, a group of West Enders is revitalizing their neighborhood through a number of small actions that add up to significant progress. Take their beautification initiative: neighbors came together to spruce up their houses with paint, replace dead or unkempt landscaping with rosebushes, and remove cars from the front yards. A larger project fell in their laps last year when the city of New Iberia called in early May to say that it would not be providing the $20,000 it had been to run a summer camp for 50 kids. In a short time, the neighborhood association pulled together a network of volunteers to serve 300 children: no one was turned away. The kids had a ball and the parents were relieved that their children had a fun, safe place to spend their days while they were at work. The association is planning to run the camp again this year, with more notice and some help from a local bank.

The story doesn’t end there. Robby told us that, according to the local Sherriff’s department, last summer was the first summer that there was no recorded juvenile criminal activity. No crime at all. Not only has the neighborhood group outshined the city-run summer camp in terms of numbers served, but it has also run the most successful crime prevention program in the community. At this point, with the $20k they’re saving the city in camp funds, plus the savings on running kids through the judicial system, we’re looking at perhaps $50K in taxpayer money that this group of active citizens saved last summer alone.

The real value in the West Side’s work, however, is that it changed the community’s relationship with the Sherriff’s office for the better. The summer camp went a long way in showing that kids aren’t bad, even though they get into trouble when they’re bored and unsupervised. That’s true no matter where you go, but it’s not always easy to remember when bias, perception, and emotion cloud the truth.

Last weekend, the sheriff’s office showed up, in plain clothes, to a community festival in the West End whose proceeds would support this year’s summer camp. I left feeling inspired and optimistic that, when people pull together toward a common goal, they succeed in ways that multiply their efforts. The benefit of restoring a positive relationship with law enforcement is worth untold amounts of money, emotion, and human life, especially in these times when #BlackLivesMatter.

What does this have to do with investing in what you believe? The tenets of what makes a good investment are all there: market demand, good management team, and strong financial and social return. Here, the investment builds on the assets of goodwill, leadership, and joy, and I’ve found examples of this type of success all over the country. However, news of this good work stays local, and people outside the vicinity don’t even know about it, much less give to it.

The age-old question of economies of scale bedevils us again. How do we preserve quality outcomes in community-led development, as we have seen on the West Side of New Iberia, or in business while scaling up in a financially sustainable way? Corporate leaders, operating at a global scale, feel hemmed in by Wall Street analysts’ focus on quarterly financial results; entrepreneurs, the good and lucky ones, weigh the pros and cons of taking venture capital knowing that outside investors keep their exit at the top of the priority list; and non-profit leaders can’t grow too quickly or they create a deeper fundraising hole to dig out of every year. The “new deal” we need now is a new deal between leaders who want to create value — in a community, for a customer — and the money sources that fund them. The best deals are made when both sides come out ahead. Let’s start putting our money where the value is.