Background
In 2006, the Ford Foundation funded Tuskegee University $500,000 for two years to promote asset-building policies and programs to help rebuild hurricane-affected areas of the southern Black Belt States. Tuskegee aimed its efforts in building a coalition in the southern Black Belt states for an inclusive asset-building policy and program agenda. The project's present focus is on victims of Katrina, Rita, and other recent hurricanes and Black-owned land loss.
Beginning in June 2006, the G.W. Carver Agricultural Experiment Station at Tuskegee University, and with technical assistance provided by the Center for Social Development at The Brown School of Social Work, Washington University in St. Louis, has been working to mobilize key stakeholders in the Southern Black Belt States and Gulf Coast Region to come together and participate in the development of a multi-state asset building coalition. Alabama Arise, the Federation of Southern Cooperatives, the Florida Family Network, Florida A & M University, and the Mississippi Association of Cooperatives have served as the conveners of statewide meetings. Collectively, these organizations, with the support of the Ford Foundation, have organized to create and support asset building coalitions in four states. These coalitions in the hurricane affected region have come together and are based on the inclusion of organizations with vested interests in supporting asset building policies and program agendas. The focus of the work is victims of recent hurricanes in the southern Black Belt region, states witrhout asset building policies, and the traditional limited resource land-based communities and farmers.
In 2008, The Ford Foundation funded Tuskegee University $800,000 for two years to strengthen their work. The significance of organizing a regional coalition is to promote programs and policies that will stimulate long term economic growth for individuals, families, organizations, and businesses in the region.
The following four states make up the regional focus: Alabama, Florida, Louisiana and Mississippi. These four states comprise the Gulf Coast Regional Asset Building Coalition. Each state's major focus is to coordinate efforts into a state-wide Asset Building Coalition with the major purpose of creating asset building legislation for victims of hurricane/natural disasters. The coalitions will work to advocate for the implementation of a wide spectrum of asset building programs and policies. Examples of such possible initiatives include but are not limited to: children's savings accounts, state-level earned income savings accounts for education & small business development, and financial education programs.