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Remarks by CDFI Fund Director Donna Gambrell at OFN's Eighth Annual Native Gathering
Monday, November 14, 2011
Minneapolis, Minnesota
Introduction
As the Director of the CDFI Fund, I often come face to face with the hard facts of poverty in America and see a side of our nation that remains invisible to most of our citizens. But one of the truly rewarding things about my job is that I also have a chance to see great hopes rise in the midst of great hardships.
I like to think that the mission of the CDFI Fund is to enable the new economic opportunities that foster new hope, and nowhere has that been more true than in our work in Native Communities.
Back in 2009, I had an opportunity to visit the Oglala Sioux Nation in Pine Ridge, South Dakota, to announce the awards for the Native American CDFI Assistance Program (NACA Program). One of the recipients of an award that year was Lakota Funds, which was established in 1986 and has loaned more than $5.5 million to create more than 660 businesses and 1,100 jobs on or near the Pine Ridge Reservation.
Among the small businesses Lakota Funds has invested in is Native American Natural Foods, a company that was founded in 2006 on the Pine Ridge Reservation and creates a line of traditional Native food products.
You may be familiar with the company’s most popular product, the Tanka Bar. It is a 100 percent natural food bar made from cranberries and prairie-raised buffalo. And I can confirm from personal experience that it is delicious.
Support from Lakota Funds, as well as from another CDFI, Clearinghouse CDFI, has enabled Native American Natural Foods to grow and prosper. Its products are now available in thousands of retail locations nationwide, and the Tanka Bar received a 2010 Editor’s Choice Award from Backpacker magazine. And just a couple of weeks ago, Mark Tilsen, president of Native American Natural Foods, and Karlene Hunter, CEO, were among the winners of the Social Venture Network’s prestigious Innovation Award for 2011.
These would be exceptional accomplishments for any small business, let alone one that is located on the Pine Ridge Reservation, one of the poorest communities in the United States, with an unemployment rate of more than 70 percent. But Native American Natural Foods is clearly a company that is determined not simply to survive but to succeed with financing made available through CDFIs. The company expresses it like this:
Our mission is to heal the people and our Mother Earth by building a company that innovates new food products based on the traditional values of Native American respect for all living things by living in balance with mind, body, and spirit.
I will add that the company is committed to creating jobs for young people from Pine Ridge. Ninety-five percent of its staff are tribal members who live on the reservation.
So this is what I am talking about when I say I see great hope rising amidst great hardship. The Tanka Bar is just one example of the potential for innovation that exists in Native Communities today. And it is why the CDFI Fund is committed to helping Native Communities all around the nation overcome your present hardships.
The CDFI Fund’s Support for Native Communities
As many of you know, this past Friday the United States Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs held a hearing in Washington entitled “Opportunities and Challenges for Economic Development in Indian Country.”
Led by Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Johnson, of South Dakota, the Committee discussed the obstacles to job creation in Native Communities and heard testimony from Mark Tilsen, President of Native American Natural Foods, Martin Olsson, President of Eagle Bank, Tanya Fiddler, Executive Director of Four Bands Community Fund, and Sue Woodrow, Community Development Advisor at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
I would like to thank each of the witnesses for their expert testimony. And I would like to thank Senator Johnson for helping to focus attention on the challenges and opportunities facing Native Communities.
After the hearing, Senator Johnson remarked that “fostering small business growth is a vital step toward increasing employment opportunities and improving local economies throughout the country. Small business growth in Indian Country is no exception.”
That is an observation with which all of us at the CDFI Fund wholeheartedly agree. Indeed, it has been one of the cornerstones of our more than 10 years of work in Native Communities.
In 2001, at the request of Congress, the CDFI Fund published the landmark Native American Lending Study, which identified 17 major barriers that undermine access to capital and financial services in Native Communities and proposed a variety of solutions to address these barriers. Since then, we have worked very hard to develop and expand the Native Initiatives program. As an expression of our continuing commitment, we published a new five-year strategic plan for the program in 2009.
The plan identifies five key objectives that the CDFI Fund seeks to achieve from 2009 to 2014:
- To sustain and advance established Native CDFIs;
- To increase opportunities for Native CDFIs to access available capital;
- To increase financial skills and opportunities in Native Communities;
- To increase interagency coordination of Federal funding for Native CDFIs; and
- To update the Native American Lending Study of 2001.
I am pleased to report that we are making excellent progress toward achieving these goals and overcoming the barriers identified in the Native American Lending Study. The CDFI Fund’s Native Initiatives is working, and the Native CDFI movement is growing.
Indeed, the number of certified Native CDFIs has grown consistently and now is at an all-time high. In 2001, there were just 14 Native CDFIs, and in 2009, there were 50. As of September 30, 2011, there were 69 certified Native CDFIs—a nearly five-fold increase since 2001 and a 38 percent increase since 2009.
The increase in the number of certified Native CDFIs is the direct result of the success of the CDFI Fund’s NACA Program. Since the NACA Program was created in 2002, we have awarded Native CDFIs with 255 grants totaling $57.7 million. In the FY 2011 round of the program, we received 88 applications requesting $35 million—the most ever for the NACA Program and an increase of 48 percent over the $23.7 million requested in FY 2010—and awarded $11.8 million to 35 Native CDFIs in 17 states. The growing demand demonstrates that our Native Initiatives program is reaching more and more communities that have lacked access to Financial and Technical Assistance and is helping to build their lending capacity. Clearly, the NACA Program has been a success.
In addition, more Native CDFIs are beginning to apply for and receive Financial and Technical Assistance awards through the CDFI Program. Citizen Potawatomi Community Development Corporation, of Shawnee, Oklahoma, was the first certified Native CDFI to make the transition from the NACA Program to the CDFI Program, receiving a CDFI Program award in 2009. In 2011, three Native CDFIs received awards through the CDFI Program: Hawaii First Federal Credit Union, First Nations Oweesta Corporation, and, once again, Citizen Potawatomi. I want to congratulate all of you on your success.
Finally, in 2010 and 2011, the CDFI Fund presented a series of intergovenmental workshops to promote economic development in Native American communities. Entitled Growing Economies in Indian Country: Taking Stock of Progress and Partnership, the series is designed to establish an open dialogue among participants, to highlight federal funding programs for Tribal organizations, and to showcase successful economic development strategies, economic development models, and potential business opportunities. The workshops, which are co-sponsored by the CDFI Fund, the Federal Reserve, and a number of other federal agencies, have been held in a dozen locations around the country and have attracted nearly a thousand participants.
The bottom line is that there has never been a better time to be a Native CDFI. The CDFI Fund’s support for you is strong and growing.
Opportunities for Native CDFIs
I would like to urge all of you to take advantage of the opportunities that the CDFI Fund will be making available in the coming year. And there will be a number of opportunities.
First of all, I want to encourage you to apply for the FY 2012 funding round of the NACA Program which will open today and applications will be due on January 18, 2012.
Native CDFIs are also eligible for awards under the new Healthy Food Financing Initiative (HFFI), which provides grants for organizations serving food deserts—low-income neighborhoods with limited access to affordable and nutritious food. In September, the CDFI Fund awarded $25 million in grants to 12 CDFIs under the HFFI. I encourage you to apply for the next round of HFFI awards, which will be made through the CDFI Program.
In 2012, we will also be launching a new training series for Native CDFIs called The Leadership Journey: Native CDFI Growth and Excellence, which is intended to provide advanced, executive-level training and technical support to help Native CDFIs take their operations to the next level. The program is part of the CDFI Fund’s Capacity Building Initiative, and will be provided by NeighborWorks® America with specialized input from the Seven Sisters Community Development Group.
Once again, we will announce the dates and locations of the Leadership Journey training sessions soon through CDFI Updates and our website, and we hope you will be able to attend. We also encourage you to attend any of the other training sessions offered through the Capacity Building Initiative. All of them are open to Native and non-Native CDFIs alike.
And, finally, if your organization has not yet been certified as a CDFI, we encourage you to begin the process as soon as you can. After all, certification is required for most of our programs. It is the first step toward taking advantage of the many opportunities the CDFI Fund offers. So let us hear from you soon.
Honoring the Past, Building the Future
The CDFI Fund is deeply committed to ensuring that Native American, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian communities have the same access to capital, credit, and business opportunities as any other communities in the United States. And we are deeply aware of the importance of fostering self-determination in Native Communities by promoting sustainable economic development that respects and preserves traditional values while also drawing upon the knowledge, skills, and best practices of contemporary times.
These are challenging times not just for Native Communities but for all low-income communities throughout the nation. The economic downturn has brought new hardships to communities that had already been struggling for generations.
At the CDFI Fund, we are pleased to see the Native CDFI movement growing stronger every year. But we also understand the challenges you face, and we want to assure you that we are here for you and will stand by you. So please, explore ways to use the programs we offer. Work with us and always let us know how we can serve you better.
Above all, I hope you will always remember why you do this challenging work and why you serve the communities and people you serve.
I hope you will remember the Lakota woman who lives on the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation and used a loan from Four Bands Community Fund to purchase an industrial sewing machine for her embroidery business. The purchase has enabled her to lease a large space for production and employ her two brothers. All three are now making a good living and helping to keep money that would have been spent outside the reservation at work in the local economy.
I hope you will remember the Tohono O’odham people of southern Arizona, who saw the introduction of processed foods lead to unprecedented rates of diabetes in their community but are once again growing and harvesting the traditional desert foods that sustained them for centuries. Thanks to start-up financing from their Native CDFI, the Tohono O’odham have now opened the Desert Rain Café, a restaurant on their reservation that serves their traditional native foods.
And, of course, I hope you will also remember Native American Natural Foods and the many lives that its Tanka Bar is transforming on the Pine Ridge Reservation.
On behalf of everyone at the CDFI Fund, I thank you for your dedication and your outstanding work. May great hopes always rise in all your communities. We look forward to working with you.
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