I. CHESTER COUNTY COMMUNITY FOUNDATION - GRANT PROPOSAL SUMMARY SHEET Contact Information Date: October 24, 2014 Organization Name: El Comité de Apoyo a los Trabajadores Agrícolas (CATA Farmworker Support Committee) Contact Name: Marge Niedda Address: PO Box 510 Contact Title: Administrator Glassboro, N.J. 08028 Contact E-mail: catamn@aol.com Phone: (856)881-2507 Fax: 856-881-2027 Website: www.cata-farmworkers.org Year Incorporated: 1979 Has your nonprofit ever applied to the Community Foundation? Yes No_X_ Has your nonprofit ever received funding from the Community Foundation? Yes No_X_ Field/s of Interest: X_ Education X_ Health X_ Human Services Organization Information: Geographic Area Served : Entire county Describe Population Served and Annual Number of People Served: CATA works in the mid-atlantic region with farmworkers and other low-wage workers and their families who come from Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean. Most speak Spanish as their first language (or an indigenous language) and the vast majority earn between $10,000 and $12,500 per year with most families living below the poverty line. Through our trainings, outreach, and community meetings conducted during the year, CATA organizers interact with approximately 2,000 workers in any given year and has a membership base of almost 4000 individuals. Most of the workers who live in Chester County and are employed in the mushroom industry and other forms of low-wage labor migrated from central Mexico, with a growing number of individuals and families from indigenous Guatemala. Many workers and their families have established themselves in the community and today, several generations populate the communities surrounding the mushroom industry. Mission: CATA s mission is to empower and educate farmworkers and other low-wage Latino workers through leadership development and capacity building so that they are able to make informed decisions on the best course of action for their interests. Proposal Summary: CATA employs a three-pronged approach to achieve its mission and vision: Empower, educate and develop leadership among the Latino community; build coalition support for social, economic, and environmental justice; and enable the Latino community to influence public policy on issues that directly affect them. CATA s four main program areas are: Immigration, Health and Safety, Workers Rights and Food Justice. Some of our current projects include: Conducting participatory trainings on pesticide prevention and workers rights, creating and maintaining organic community food gardens to increase the migrant community s access to healthy food, establishing a federal credit union to increase the migrant community s economic power, and forming a community radio station. Annual Budget $ 531,388 8 # of Full-Time Equivalent Paid Staff 75_ % of budget for program expenses 6 # of Board Volunteers 8%_ % of budget for administrative expenses 50 # of Active Non-Board Volunteers 0% % of budget for fundraising expenses _2500 # of Volunteer Hours100 % total Top 3-5 funding sources: NJ Department of Health $146,000, EAT4Health $100,000, NJ Department of Community Affairs $82,993, US Department of Labor OSHA $61,395, Jessie Smith Noyes Foundation $25,000 Grant Amount Requested from CCCF: $ $12,000 Rev. 06/2013
II. CHESTER COUNTY COMMUNITY FOUNDATION GRANT PROPOSAL NARRATIVE 1. Organization s history, goals, key achievements and distinctiveness CATA was founded in southern New Jersey in 1979 by Puerto Rican farmworkers who migrated to the mid-atlantic region in search of work in seasonal agriculture. Today CATA s members are primarily from Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean and it implements its programs in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, and the Delmarva Peninsula, Maryland. For the past thirty-five years, CATA has been the vehicle through which the regional farmworker community has built its capacity and worked towards achieving social, economic and environmental justice. CATA has trained thousands of farmworkers and their families on pesticide protection and various other health issues and their legal rights as workers in order to create a safe and fair working and living environment. CATA is considered a leader in its field and has demonstrated its capability at a public policy level through past participation in the US Environmental Protection Agency s (EPA) Pesticide Program Dialogue Committee that oversees the Food Quality Protection Act. In addition, CATA has sat on several state and national advisory committees including US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Small Farms Commission, New Jersey Governor s Blue Ribbon Panel on Immigration, and the New Jersey Latino Health Advisory Committee to the State Health Commissioner. CATA is a founding member and active participant of the Agricultural Justice Project (AJP), an initiative to create a fair and equitable food system via social justice standards for organic and sustainable agriculture. CATA also plays a leadership role on the board of the Domestic Fair Trade Association s (DFTA) efforts to promote fair trade in North America. Through CATA s work in Pennsylvania, mushroom workers built their capacity to organize and win historic union elections, including the Kaolin Workers Union which continues to actively negotiate better working conditions for over 600 workers in Kennett Square today. Farmworkers and low wage workers fought to increase state minimum wage in Pennsylvania and New Jersey and CATA was the lead plaintiff in a national H2B visa case to increase the prevailing wage for non-farmworkers. Food justice issues are being influenced at the national level with a campaign for a Food Justice Certified label for sustainable farms and businesses that incorporates specific standards on workers rights and, at the local level, with farmworker members establishing organic community food gardens in order to have access to healthy produce for their families. As a farmworker member-led and grassroots-driven organization with a strong base in our membership, CATA has a unique role in helping families be able to help themselves. The organizational structure is based on worker committees to create, plan, and help administer our programs. Therefore, our strategy is to guide and facilitate workers through their own journeys, which helps to build their sense of ownership in the projects. This type of membership participation enables CATA to be able to work with and advocate for farmworkers and their families with a sense of honesty and integrity that is not possible in a different form of organizational structure. 2. Funding request Farmworkers are a vital component within the food system yet farm work is one of the poorest paid jobs in the country and 60% of farmworker families live at or below the poverty line. Due to long-standing legislation based on a history of racial discrimination, farmworkers do not earn overtime nor have a protected right to organize for better conditions at work. They consistently have limited or no access to adequate housing, affordable healthy food, decent work conditions or health benefits for themselves or
their families. Along with other low-income, minority, and immigrant communities, their families suffer higher than average rates of diabetes, childhood obesity, asthma, and heart disease, and parents do not have the financial ability to provide their families with a healthy diet, access to healthcare, and other basic needs. Due to these compounding factors and more, farmworkers and their families are a vulnerable and disadvantaged population which opens them up to exploitation and unfair treatment in the workplace, in housing situations, and in the community in general. CATA s strategy is to develop the leadership capacity of the Latino community, build a wide range of support for farmworker justice by working in coalition with others on common issues, and impact public policies that directly affect the Latino community. Within this strategy we see the interconnectedness of issues facing the community and attempt to address them in a holistic manner including labor, health, environment, and trade/food policies. It is in this framework and as a direct result of the expressed needs of the migrant community that our programming is currently focused on immigration issues, health and safety, workers rights, and food justice. We advocate for fair and comprehensive immigration reform in partnership with other local immigrant organizations and are certified by the Board of Immigration Appeals to offer a variety of immigration services. CATA conducts participatory trainings to workers on how to protect themselves and their families when working with and around pesticides and other harmful chemicals as well as in all types of extreme weather. Workers are educated on their legal rights in the workplace and how to advocate for themselves in the face of intimidation and exploitation. CATA promotes a Food Justice Certification that attempts to verify social justice claims in organic and sustainable agriculture. Through CATA s Food Justice Program, we help community members create and maintain organic community gardens in order to improve their access to healthy food. Currently, CATA is in the process of establishing a credit union in order to build the migrant community s economic power. Efforts to create a community radio station are also underway which will assist the organization in developing a communication system to better inform and mobilize the Latino community via radio programing with the capability of Internet broadcasting in order to reach a wide audience. CATA s work over these last several decades in Pennsylvania has been to build the capacity of the Latino community so that they are better able to survive and thrive in a new country where they may not know their rights and often feel isolated from the rest of society. As a migrant worker organization, our members regularly move to other locations, leaving the cycle of leadership development as a constant and important component of CATA s work. In addition, with the new initiatives that CATA is developing at this time based on the expressed needs of the communities that we work with, we are at a critical juncture in which concerted outside support is required to help these projects to get off the ground and be successful. This grant will increase our organizational capacity to improve the working and living conditions of the Latino community by building our members capacity to act on their priority issues of concern. In Chester County, specifically, it will allow us to increase our outreach efforts, organize worker committees to engage in specific issues including workers rights and access to healthy food, and continue existing work towards creating a credit union and community radio station. This will include: Facilitation of monthly committee meetings, outreach to and training of workers on farms and surrounding communities, and coordination of the new CATA organic community garden located at the Borough of Kennett Square s new Public Works Department facilities. Success will be measured in terms of the amount of participation in our programs, which is recorded in sign-in sheets and internal reports. Grant monies will be used to support our work in Chester County by covering staff time, travel, and supplies and materials.
3. How impact and results will be demonstrated The impact and results of our work will be demonstrated by the progress towards and completion of our objectives described below. Additionally, we will have regular evaluations with the committee members as the projects progress in order to be better able to gauge effectiveness and usefulness of our projects and programming as well as constant internal evaluation via staff and organization board meetings. Shorter-term outcomes: - Increased outreach for and attendance at our community meetings, trainings, and all other organizational activities, - Progress towards the creation of a credit union by 2017 that will provide a means for the Latino community to safely save money, establish credit, and build equity in order to increase their economic stability (continuing to work with legal partners on the federal application, survey of potential members, and securing start-up funds), - Progress towards the establishment of a community radio station by 2015 to keep the Latino community informed on pertinent issues, - Greater partnerships and alliances with local and regional food system advocates in order to increase public consciousness about social justice in the food system, - Development of CATA s new Organic Community Garden in Kennett Square which will enable farmworker families to create their own access to healthy food so that their children can benefit from a healthier lifestyle, Longer-term outcomes: - Latino workers will grow their leadership capacity to strive for safer workplace conditions where they are treated with dignity and respect, - Farms and businesses will adopt practices that are based on standards for social justice in the workplace to create a more fair food system with the ability to earn a living wage and a strong emphasis on the protection of workers rights, - The farmworker community will be better equipped by improve their working and living conditions and better able to lift themselves out of poverty.