BAYFIELD – When Pam Wilhoite arrived in Bayfield in 2000, she brought a simple and groundbreaking idea: Pine River Shares, a nonprofit that helps people most affected by human welfare issues, such as food insecurity, create their own solutions.
Since then, the nonprofit has helped local leaders reshape their communities.
It is a simple idea to put impacted populations in charge. It is also disruptive: The nonprofit’s methods are rooted in revolutionary ideas from the 20th century that tried to give more power to the people instead of the upper classes.
Instead of a nonprofit that uses a top-down approach – in which directors and program developers make the decisions – the people decide. And in the Pine River Valley, Wilhoite’s approach is working.
“When people get together and are impacted by an issue, we solve the problem,” Wilhoite said. “We get things done.”
Pine River Shares started in 2014 as a La Plata Family Centers Coalition program and became independent in 2017. It offers services to the Pine River Valley, a 725-square-mile area from Vallecito to Arboles with about 13,000 residents.
It’s a place where residents gather to solve local issues, such as food insecurity, isolation from resources and income inequality. While they identify solutions, the nonprofit provides the funding, guidance and resources.
So far, community leaders have created the Field to Fork program, a weekly food pantry and a free clothing service. Students have set up food pantries at schools and help with the Bayfield Kids for Kids food program.
The community-centered approach is rooted in the idea of popular education, as defined by Brazilian educator Paulo Freire, Wilhoite said. Freire aimed to flip power structures upside down by putting the unemployed, working classes and marginalized communities in leadership positions.
Her methods also come from the Highlander Research and Education Center nestled in the Tennessee hills, where leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks studied the popular education-influenced approach.
At Pine River Shares, all decisions are made by consensus – by impacted groups only.
“If it doesn’t impact you, you don’t get to be part of the decision-making, with all due respect,” she said. If they don’t think an idea is a solution, it doesn’t happen, she said.
The organization has no hierarchy, she said. Pine River Shares has a board and Wilhoite’s title is executive director – but everyone has equal power to shape programming.
Instead of hiring a large staff, Wilhoite gives money back to the community through volunteer stipends.
“Her aim is to slowly but surely walk backwards out of (a program) to empower the people that she just left with it,” said Susan Fischer, Pine River Shares board member. “So they don’t feel like they can’t do it if she walked out the door.”
Wilhoite refuses to be the main focus of Pine River Shares. The work is about the people, not her, she emphasized, leaning forward and speaking emphatically.
Still, her passion and experience make her stand out.
Wilhoite has decades of experience practicing the approach and teaching others to do the same. When she ran at a domestic violence shelter, she dismissed the staff and put survivors in charge. In Texas, she taught the approach nationally with the Texas Council on Family Violence and the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence.
Fischer described Wilhoite as “vision with feet.”
“She’s kind of a visionary with action right on its tail,” Fischer said.
Sara Grover, who works desk-to-desk with Wilhoite at the nonprofit, isn’t really sure that she sleeps. Wilhoite is at the heart of the organization, but she resists hierarchy and insists everyone is treated equally, Grover said.
She’s always running around, but she doesn’t get worn out. The process motivates her.
“It’s like drinking coffee. It’s so inspiring because I just see that it works,” Wilhoite said. “I think it’s rooted in a very deep love for people ... and I have absolute trust in our ability to change things.”
Wilhoite dreams of opening a resource and education center in the Rocky Mountains, similar to the Highlander center, which focuses on Southern and Appalachian communities.
“We support people organizing their communities for justice, and for people to work collectively to build power in their communities,” said Susan Williams, a Highlander team member. “All kinds of community leaders have come whose names we’ll never know.”
There, Wilhoite participated in workshops on women’s anti-violence and community organizing.
On her first visit, she remembered mismatched wooden rocking chairs and pictures of Eleanor Roosevelt, Fannie Lou Hamer, Parks and King hanging above them.
“People who had been there, and studied and sat in that room – in those rocking chairs – and did the work we were about to undertake,” Wilhoite said. “It was awe-inspiring.”
People have come from around the country to participate in Highlander workshops, and Wilhoite envisions the same for the Pine River Valley.
“We’re figuring out how to take the conditions of our lives and work together to undo them and be powerful, as people, together,” she said. “Highlander center does that for the people that live in that area. We can do that here on the West Slope. That, to me, is the future, the vision, the dream.”
smullane@durangoherald.com
