HELENA-WEST HELENA, Ark.—It’s one of those deadly hot days in the Mississippi River Delta, the kind that gave the region’s famed blues musicians more reason to shuffle and moan.

Only a handful of people walk the downtown streets. One woman among them shouts as she hurries into an air-conditioned building: “Not a good time to visit the Delta.”

But visitors are what this town is counting on to keep from vanishing into the past, especially visitors who come and stay.

The nonprofit Southern Financial Partners arrived seven years ago and stayed, leveraging more than $60 million to help residents revitalize their 174-year-old river city. Lawyer Bernie Crowley returned home after taking a job in Atlanta and is preparing to open a biodiesel plant.

Michael Boone returned home, went to work for Southern Financial as an economic developer, and was re-elected city treasurer two years ago. His lifelong friends, Terence and Latoya Harris, opened up the Bistro Bar and Grill this summer, one of the few places in town offering an alternative to chain-food restaurants.

“I like it here,” says Terence Harris, 31, who also runs a barber shop across the street while Latoya operates a beauty salon. “If you set any kind of goal and push it, you can make it here.”

In 2003, after years of infighting among government officials and racial distrust, city and county residents sat down to set goals for their community. Hundreds of residents participated in more than 500 meetings over a year and a half and developed a plan to save their job-hungry communities.

Aside from specifics, they adopted one overarching goal: “By 2010, Phillips County will be a model community for the Delta, one that is economically strong, spiritually enriched, and demonstrates equality among its people.”

With two years to go, one can walk along Cherry Street downtown and see the plan take shape. Historic buildings have new roofs and a gift shop is open for business; another one will open in the fall. A couple of cafes are open and a new Little Biscuit Recording Studio caters to local talent. A local businessman has plans to open a deli and a community workshop where carpenters and craftspeople can share equipment.

Workers are building loft apartments above a new state revenue office, and down the street crews have unearthed old gasoline tanks and cleared the ground for a new Court Square Park to include a farmers market and a “cultural history plaza.”

Nearer the river, experienced guide John Ruskey of Clarksdale, Miss., has opened Quapaw Canoe Co. He offers guided and self-guided tours by canoe or kayak on the Lower Mississippi. Visitors can stop at Buck Island for a day hike, to fish or birdwatch, or can camp out overnight. Ruskey also makes canoes and teaches young apprentices the business.

Directly or indirectly, the goings-on in this east Arkansas county grew out of the Delta Bridge Project, an initiative involving the Walton Family Foundation and Southern Bancorp bank-holding company. The company’s Southern Financial Partners provides the guidance and expertise for community members to carry out their goals.

“I think this is what they’ve done very, very well,” says community development expert Bo Beaulieu, director of the Southern Rural Development Center in Starkville, Miss.

Hired by the Walton foundation to evaluate Southern Financial, Beaulieu says community developers typically find, in rural areas, groups fragmented by race, class, income, and educational levels. But Southern Financial has managed to achieve “buy-in,” he says, that intangible quality in which individuals take a personal interest in working together.

At this stage, Beaulieu suggests, Helena-West Helena should work on generating multiple jobs through many sources—small businesses, entrepreneurs, the self-employed, and online enterprise—rather than banking on one large manufacturer coming to town.