Marianist Sharing Fund in Action
HELPING FARM WORKERS HELP THEMSELVES

When the Farm Labor Organizing Committee in North Carolina won an historic contract covering more than 8,000 workers, they requested that National Farm Workers Ministry-North Carolina take major responsibility for providing transportation to bring regional worker representatives to monthly leadership sessions. This task was crucial because the workers are spread out in more than 1,000 camps over two-thirds of the state, do not have personal transportation and sometimes do not even have a phone at their camp.

Volunteers and workers at monthly Project Solidarity meeting.

With funding from the Marianist Sharing Fund, NFWM’s Project Solidarity recruited and coordinated more than 100 supporters who volunteered hours of driving in their own cars to pick the workers up, deliver them to a training meeting and then return them to the camps. The project culminated in the first ever statewide farmworker assembly on Aug. 28, 2005. Nearly 400 workers from every region of the state attended; over 75 individuals provided transportation for the workers to get to the assembly; more than 10 individuals drove 12-passenger vans (some of those even raised the funds to pay for the vans!) and more than 35 people volunteered during the assembly.

Volunteers came away strengthened by their experience. Several spoke of the value of learning more about the union and seeing workers use their new union for their own benefit. One man said his participation in the project, “reinforced my belief that these workers are capable of controlling their own destiny here, their working conditions, etc.” Another stressed the importance of feeling connected to actual people rather than just the abstract "cause." Perhaps the most to the heart of the matter was the woman who said, “For me it just reaffirmed their humanity just to be able to put some names and faces to the facts.”