Case Study #3: Pacific Institute for Community Organization (PICO)

CASE STUDY #3: PACIFIC INSTITUTE FOR COMMUNITY ORGANIZATION (PICO)

CO at Work: How a faith-based New Orleans group reaches out person-by-person to identify its priorities and implement change.

All Congregations Together (ACT) is one of the largest institution- or faith-based CO groups in the country. The citywide New Orleans group is a PICO affiliate. Through its membership of more than 60 congregations, ACT represents more than 150,000 city residents - youth, senior citizens and all ages in between; Black, White, Hispanic, Asian and more; from across the economic spectrum; from 13 different religious denominations. Here is how ACT describes its commitment, its constituency, its work and some of its results:

ACT is "united in faith - faith that teaches us to reach out to our neighbors; faith that tells us that we have a responsibility to ease the suffering of our brothers and sisters and leave this world knowing that because of us, it is a better place than it was when we entered it - that we have indeed made a difference."

ACT does its primary work in one-on-one conversations⁴¹ - more than 10,000 over the past six years - with people in its congregations and surrounding communities. The issues that ACT prioritizes for its research and action strategies come from these conversations. In this way, ACT ensures that its CO is truly bottom-up, rather than top-down with issues imposed on the community. ACT has trained more than 1,000 leaders from the community and, with the spark and hard work of these leaders, has established itself as a highly effective, results-oriented grassroots organization. Some of ACT's accomplishments include:

• Securing public resources. The New Orleans Times-Picayune reported that ACT's "public accountability sessions" with city leaders had produced "remarkable results. ... City Hall attention to ACT concerns is a sign that the organization has made the transition from noisemaker to player in city politics." The city increased funding for demolition of abandoned buildings in response to ACT and now has two of its 10 health inspectors responding to ACT complaints.
• Establishing effective relationships. New Orleans Mayor Marc Morial keeps a copy of ACT's nonpartisan platform for rebuilding the city on a wall in his office. Shortly after his election in 1994, Morial directed his top staff to go on retreat with ACT leaders to strengthen that relationship. Morial says, "Government can in no way do it alone, not without the help of the people most affected and leaders in the community willing to lend of themselves and their time. The formation of ACT is truly a godsend."
• Impacting a failing educational system. In 1998-99, ACT sought major reforms in the exceedingly low-performing Orleans Parish school system. ACT's 10-issue platform was presented to the School Board in May 1998 at by far the best-attended meeting in the board's history - over 1,000 residents were brought together by ACT. The platform is the basis for significant structural, policy and other reforms that now have the backing of the city's business, political and university communities. Recently, the Director of the Greater New Orleans Education Foundation credited ACT with "making the reform movement happen and holding us accountable for results."
• Building clout on a broader scale to affect public policies. ACT is also working statewide with other groups in the PICO network to develop state support for after-school academic learning centers (several million dollars have already been committed by the state), steer the resources to the most needy schools in each community, measure and demonstrate the results in improved student performance, and seek increased resources to expand the number of centers so that as many under-performing students as possible can be served.⁴²