JULY 30, 2009 ISSUE
SAF Intern Gives Presentation on Summer Experience
Marisela Martinez interned with the Farmworker Health Program under program leaders Jessica Haywood and Allison Lipscomb, the program’s local coordinator. Martinez gave a presentation at the Agricultural Conference Center in Boone on Wednesday, July 29, on her experiences working with farmworkers in the Durham-Wake Forest University area this summer. Photos by Corinne Saunders
Marisela Martinez, a university student from Salinas, Calif., majoring in psychology, worked as an intern this summer with Student Action with Farmworkers (SAF) in the Durham-Wake Forest University area.
She gave a presentation on her summer experience at 10:30 a.m. on Wednesday, July 29, at the Agricultural Conference Center in Boone. The presentation, open to the public, was given in Spanish to the Latino ladies’ group and other community members. Martinez is herself from a farmworker family—her father works in strawberry fields in California. When she was growing up in Mexico, he came to work in the U.S. every year, and the whole family moved to California in 2002.
According to www.saf-unite.org, the nonprofit organization’s mission is to bring students and farmworkers together to learn about each other’s lives, share resources and skills, improve conditions for farmworkers and build diverse coalitions working for social change.
Both Latino and American students intern with the program, which is a two-way exchange, Martinez said—farmworkers and students share stories, ideas and cultures with each other.
Martinez specifically worked with the Farm Worker Health Program, alongside other students from California, Idaho, Washington, D.C., Tennessee and North Carolina.
Under the supervision of program leaders Allison Lipscomb and Jessica Haywood, the students went to about 15 houses of area farmworkers. They provided health screenings of blood sugar levels, blood pressure, height and weight, as well as education about pesticides—to which the farmworkers are routinely exposed although they lack knowledge of its potential harmful effects.
“We returned various times to the same house[s], depending on the needs they had,” Martinez said.
The program strives to improve the quality of life for farmworkers, who live in oppression and have legal problems and difficulties paying for, or finding transportation to, health services. Many of the farmworkers don’t know they have rights, Martinez said.
The group worked with Wake Forest University to offer English classes, guitar lessons and other activities. These classes were offered on an experimental basis, with future programs depending on how the class was received.
Farm Worker Health Programs operate in North and South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia.
According to its website, SAF works with farmworkers, students and advocates in the Carolinas and nationwide to create a more just agricultural system. Since 1992, it has engaged thousands of students, farmworker youth and community members in the farmworker movement.
For more information, click to www.saf-unite.org or www.ncfhp.org.
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