Most farmworkers are married and/or have children; yet almost six out of ten farmworkers live apart from their immediate family members.
Recognizing Our Partners
As SAF celebrates our 20th anniversary, we would like to recognize and honor the following partner organizations on their anniversary milestones. Please let us know if your organization is celebrating an anniversary this year!
United Farmworkers of America- 50 Years
Vision: To provide farm workers and other working people with the inspiration and tools to share in society's bounty
Founded in 1962 by Cesar Chavez, the United Farm Workers of America is the nation's first successful and largest farm workers union currently active in 10 states. The UFW continues to organize in major agricultural industries across the nation. Recent years have witnessed dozens of key UFW union contract victories, among them the largest strawberry, rose, winery and mushroom firms in California and the nation. 75 percent of California's mushroom industry is now under union contract.
In 2007, the United Farm Workers signed its first contract with Salinas, Calif.-based D'Arrigo Bros., California's third-largest vegetable company. The agreement covers 1,800 farm workers in the Salinas and Imperial valleys. The UFW signed a contract, also in 2007, with Three Mile Canyon Farms, America's largest dairy-and the first major union contract protecting farm workers in Oregon. They soon signed up another nearby dairy, Willow Creek. Many recent UFW-sponsored laws and regulations aide farm workers; in California, the first state regulation in the U.S. prevents further heat deaths of farm workers. The UFW is also pushing its historic bipartisan and broadly backed AgJobs immigration reform bill.
El Centro Hispano (ECH) is a grassroots community based organization dedicated to strengthening the Latino community and improving the quality of life of Latino residents in Durham, Carrboro, Chapel Hill and surrounding areas.
El Centro Hispano was founded in 1992 as the Hispanic Resource Center, a joint project of the Catholic and Episcopal churches. The seeds of this organizing process were sown through the offering of whole family English as a Second Language (ESL) classes, a women’s group, and summer enrichment camps for children.
On January 1, 1997 El Centro Hispano became an independent nonprofit organization blending service, education, leadership development and community organizing. History was made in the summer of 2000 when El Centro Hispano, in partnership with Self-Help Credit Union, State Employees Credit Union, and the NC Minority Support Center, opened the first Latino Community Credit Union in the state of North Carolina. This sister institution has now grown to provide much needed financial services in five cities across North Carolina.
El Centro Hispano is currently the largest grassroots Latino organization in the state. El Centro has an active membership base of more than 1,000 dues paying members and additionally provides programs and services to more than 11,000 community members annually.
NC Office of Minority Health and Health Disparities - 20 Years
The Office of Minority Health and Health Disparities (OMHHD) was established by the NC General Assembly in 1992.
Vision
All North Carolinians will enjoy good health regardless of race/ethnicity, disability or socioeconomic status.
Mission
To promote and advocate for the elimination of health disparities among all racial and ethnic minorities and other underserved populations in North Carolina.
Major Focus Areas
- Research and Data: Improving the quality and availability of health information, data collection and analysis.
- Culture and Language: Providing cultural diversity and interpreter training to health and human services professionals and advocating for language services.
- Policy and Legislation: Supporting policies and legislation that improve the health and well-being of all North Carolinians.
- Partnership Development: Collaborating with others to improve minority health programs and services.
- Advocacy: Disseminating information to increase awareness of minority health and health disparities.
United Students Against Sweatshops - 15 Years
United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS) is a grassroots organization run entirely by youth and students. USAS develops youth leadership and runs strategic student-labor solidarity campaigns with the goal of building sustainable power for working people. They define “sweatshop” broadly and consider all struggles against the daily abuses of the global economic system to be a struggle against sweatshops.
USAS envisions a world in which society and human relationships are organized cooperatively, not competitively. They struggle towards a world in which all people live in freedom from oppression, in which people are valued as whole human beings rather than exploited in a quest for productivity and profits.
