NFAW (National Farmworker Awareness Week) is a time to celebrate and lift up the work of the people who pick our fruits and vegetables. Every year NFAW takes place during the week of César Chávez's birthday, March 31st, to honor his legacy as a leader of the farmworker movement. SAF has coordinated NFAW for 14 years in an effort to raise awareness about farmworker conditions and to honor their important contributions to society. This week of action is a great way to invite more people to join the movement for farmworker justice. It s an opportunity for students and community members to come together nationwide to unveil the injustices and harsh conditions farmworkers are exposed to in the fields. Our ultimate goal is to strive to bring awareness to farmworker issues all year round!! March 24th - 31st This year the 14th Annual National Farmworker Awareness Week was celebrated from March 24-31, 2013. Student Action with Farmworkers (SAF) is very excited to have partnered with 39 national and international organizations to raise awareness and to advocate for a fair agricultural system. It was amazing to see students, community members and organizations coming together to engage in the farmworker movement. The coordinated effort with partners and allies was very successful as we had over 549+ events in 20 U.S. states reaching over 66,075 new allies plus many speaking presentations at schools across Ontario, Canada, reaching over 3500 new allies. We were impressed with the many creative www.farmworkerawareness.org events - from marches to health and education presentations, films screenings, speaker panels, clothing and school supplies drive, days of service, blood drives, radio shows, proclamations, documentary presentations and high school and college education classes. SAF is very thankful to our funder Oxfam America for supporting our work which makes it possible for us coordinate this important national week of awareness. In addition, we would like to thank, recognize and uplift the work of our official partners who worked tirelessly to put together a wide range of creative and inspiring events and actions around the country by using new technology and reaching out to a countless number of people through newsletters, social media and the web. Farmworker issues affect us all directly or indirectly. For certain we don t forget to eat everyday, so let s not forget about the people who make sure our food is harvested. Each of us has the power to make a change. Become a conscious consumer and don t ignore the injustices in the fields. We can plant seeds that will harvest change!
NFAW PARTNERS Alianza Association of Farmworker Opportunity Programs Bon Appétit Management Company CATA The Farmworker Support Committee Center for Community and Civic Engagement Carleton College Community Council of Idaho, Inc. El Cambio For this year s week of action, we chose to use a mural created by Student Action with Farmworkers Levante Leadership Institute youth in collaboration with the Beehive Design Collective. This mural depicts the story of farmworkers, the story of human labor working the land, and the story of struggles for justice across generations. Because the mural represents many different struggles farmworkers face, we decided to break it down into 8 main themes to share, one for each day of the week of awareness. We were also fortu- nate to partner with ten undergraduate students at Duke s Center for Documentary Studies, who created a series of short videos to be used with each theme. The hope was to visually represent the issues to people who are new to farmworker issues. By providing images, facts and videos we were able to reach a wider audience and have a greater impact. Our 39 official partner organizations each selected a theme that their work is most closely tied to and contributed action ideas for that theme. Visit our website & like us on Facebook for even more info! El Centro Hispano Episcopal Farmworker Ministry Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) AFL-CIO FARMWORKERS DESERVE EQUAL WORKPLACE RIGHTS Farmworker Association of Florida Farmworker Justice SEPARATION OF FAMILIES Friends of Farmworkers Hartnell College High School Equivalency Program (HEP) CHILDREN WORKING IN THE FIELDS ACCESS TO EDUCATION Interfaith Alliance for Immigrant Justice Just Harvest USA Migrant Seasonal Farmworker Program - Gateway Community Health Center THE CAUSE WORKER UNITY A FOOD SYSTEM THAT IS CHEAP BUT IS BUILT ON THE BACKS OF THE POOR IS NOT MORAL AND IS NOT SUSTAINABLE National César E. Chávez Blood Drive Challenge North Carolina Council of Churches North Carolina Farmworker Health Program North Carolina Justice Center PESTICIDES, HEALTH & SAFETY
N F A W P A R T N E R S Park Ridge States PCUN Oregon s Farmworker Union Created a new resource booklet for celebrating NFAW in faith communities. This guide focuses on using faith language to lift up the concerns of farmworkers. For NFAW, the UFW organized a César Chávez Immigration Reform March where about 20,000 people came out to the streets to demand a fair and comprehensive reform! Pender Farmworker Health Program Pesticide Action Network Health Program PUENTE Spanish Language Program at Duke University Student Action with Farmworkers Bon Appetit cafes displayed a Who picked your food? poster in about 500 cafes around the country! Guests were encourage to share their thoughts on a collage. Students Against Migrant Exploitation, our partner in Canada coordinated a speaking tour at schools across Ontario, which is the province with the greatest number of farmworkers in the country. They reached over 3,500 students in 46 classrooms! Student Farmworker Alliance Student Labor Action Project Students Against Migrant Exploitation Toxic Free North Carolina United Farmworkers United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) University of Florida Samuel Proctor Oral History Program Five youth from the Levante Leadership Institute visited UNC-Chapel Hill for a dinner with farmworker advocate and civil rights leader Dolores Huerta! The students were so happy to be able to hear from this iconic figure about human rights and to be able to share the mural with her. This service learning initiative that celebrates the Chavez legacy was a complete success reaching 34 states! During NFAW 2013 this challenge reached 40,000 participants on 300 college campuses! Si Se Puede!!! University of Guelph Canada University of Minnesota Chicano Studies Urban Nutrition Initiative Witness for Peace Southeast YAYA-NFWM (Youth and Young Adult Network of the National Farm Worker Ministry)
2013 NFAW photos - From top left to right Just Harvest, CIW and Interfaith alliance for Immigrant Justice; Farmworker Advocacy Network; United Farm Workers; Witness for Peace Southeast and Farm Labor Organizing Committee. Bottom photos: Farmworker Association of Florida; Students Against Migrant Exploitation. Farmworkers work very hard and receive little benefits. They face so many barriers that make their lives very difficult, but they continue to work tirelessly to provide for their families - Natalie Hyatt & Maureen Reiser, Pender County Farmworker Health Program and NNCW Combatting the ignorance most people have regarding where their food comes from and what families go through to pick it is the most important thing. -Ben Ranz, PUENTE It s important to celebrate farmworkers because they often go unappreciated and their jobs are sometimes looked upon as a trivial and shameful. This is an incorrect and judgmental perspective that needs to change in order to help eliminate abuse. - Clarissa Goldsmith, CIW, University of Minnesota. It is important to celebrate farmworkers because these are the individuals who sustain the world through their humble skills of farmwork they are the life root of the world - Nico Gumbs, YAYA-NFWM
2013 NFAW Photos - From top left to right: PCUN & Food Action Collective-Portland State University; Bon Appetit Management Company; SAF Student Organizing School UNC-Chapel Hill; University of Idaho-CAMP Program and the National César E. Chávez Blood Drive Challenge; Bon Appetit Management Company. Bottom photo- Kilie R. Verbiest sophomore at Durham School of the Arts. We celebrate NFAW to have everybody know the cost of cheap food: human rights, poisoning the earth. To awaken young and old to the cost of our everyday choices -Josie McNeil, Substitute Spanish Teacher, Durham School of the Arts It is important to celebrate farmworkers because the work that they do is invaluable, and they need to know that we are grateful. By celebrating them we can shed light on some of the injustices these often invisible workers face and we can work first within our community and then at the national level towards change. - Boise State University Farmworkers are the backbone of this nation. Without them we would not have food on our tables. - Amanda Soltes, SAF Student Organizing School, NCSU It is important to celebrate farmworkers because so many people are unaware of the circumstances in which they work. We must work to ameliorate these conditions. SAF Student Organizing School, Duke
2013 NFAW photos from left to right: Instagram Challenge, Student Action with Farmworkers, Walter Williams High School-Spanish Class; Students Against Migrant Exploitation; University of Florida Samuel Proctor Oral History Program As part of NFAW, SAF hosted a weeklong photo-a-day contest. Our goal was to reach out to the social media audience and invite them to create images that would raise the consciousness consumers about farmworkers. Involving technology such as Instagram during NFAW was very important because it provided the public an opportunity to express themselves artistically to depict the way farmworkers influence our lives and the different faces of injustices that are still happening today in the agricultural system. For participants who uploaded an image everyday received a Got Food? Thank a Farmworker bumper sticker. The participant who got the most likes on Instagram and Facebook won a farmworker awareness prize pack including a SAF t-shirt, Harvest of Dignity film, NFAW 2013 poster, and button. Thank you to all participants! We hope you join the movement next year to raise awareness about farmworker issues in your community or college campus! Visit: www.farmworkerawareness.org Contact: SAF National Organizer Yazmin Garcia Rico 919-660-3674 yrico13@gmail.com National Farmworker Awareness Week 2014 will be March 24t- 31!!