Help Farm Worker Families #thankyoufarmworkers
It’s been a tough year for our farm working families, enduring a pandemic, record-breaking heat waves, ravaging wildfire smoke, and year-round pesticide exposure. This Thanksgiving
Farmworkers in California are in trouble, by this time of year farmworkers have some savings to make it through the slow winter months. But this year amid the pandemic, there has not been enough work, crops have gone bad due to smoke, workers have gotten sick from COVID-19 which led many to take off work for weeks, some growing very sick from the already underlying health conditions brought upon them due to the years of pesticide exposure. On top of it all, since schools closed, many families were left with choosing to pay unaffordable childcare or quitting their job to care for their children at home, many staying home. Please keep in mind farmworkers cannot work from home.
With below-poverty wages, Farmworkers don’t qualify for unemployment, stimulus checks, or even eviction moratoriums that have become the lifelines of many Americans this year. When we asked farmworkers what they were worried about this winter season, we received the same response over and over again: “the food, the bills, the rent ”. Our essential workers do not and have not received the recognition they deserve. They work 10 hour days, 6 times a week, with most earning an average of $13.50 an hour with no overtime pay until after the 10th hour.
Many farmworkers are dreading this winter season, many are worried the worst is yet to come. Despite the Covid-19 pandemic, record-breaking heatwaves, ravaging wildfire smoke, year-round pesticide exposure, and low wages. Our farmworkers remain hopeful enough that at the end of their shift they will be able to bring some money home to care for their families.
This Thanksgiving season together we can give thanks to our essential workers by providing farm working families with a traditional Thanksgiving dinner, blankets for the cold months, AND a grocery gift card ranging around $100 per family. The number of families we can help is based on the community's total donation count and efforts, our goal is 3,000 families in California.
Can you believe that the same people who put food on our tables can’t afford to feed their own families? It’s the alarming truth but YOU can help. On top of contributing by donating or volunteering you will also be giving thanks to the essential workers that go underrepresented and underappreciated, every year the media commercials fail to represent the real farmworkers of America, so this year we have started the hashtag #thankyoufarmworkers to bring awareness to the real farmworkers of this Nation and give them the thanks they deserve, we will be putting the Thanksgiving food in customized THANK YOU/ GRACIAS food boxes as a thankful gesture on behalf of the community that appreciates the work they do under all conditions.
ITEMS NEEDED:
Blankets
Grocery gift cards of any value
Direct Thanksgiving food deliveries from grocery stores of :
Stuffing
Canned cranberry sauce
Canned corn
Canned green beans
Mac n Cheese
Canned pumpkin puree
Pie crust
Thanksgiving food items you and your family love
NO REFRIGERATED ITEMS ( we will use monetary donations to buy the turkeys and refrigerated fresh produce to take extra food safety precautions )
HOW TO HELP:
BY SHIPPING DONATIONS TO:
Celebration Nation Inc
205 E Alma
Unit A
San Jose, CA 95112
Celebration Nation Inc
1919 Vineburn Ave,
Unit A1
Los Angeles, CA 90032
OR BY DONATING TO THIS GOFUNDME!
We are organizing distributions all through California, our estimated distribution dates are:
November 22nd - Soledad, CA
November 23rd - Calistoga, CA
November 24th - Fresno, CA
November 25th - Bakersfield, CA
Together we can make a difference, though the system fails to serve our essential working families, us coming together as a community to take care of one another is how we make a change in the world we want to see.
