NC FIELDNewsletter

•leadership•education•dignity

Fun in the Summertime for NC FIELD!

On July 10th Grace Weng and Zama Coursen-Neft from Human Rights Watch Youth council spoke to the farmworker youth council, Poder Juvenil Campesino (PJC) at the Kinston Public Library. They spoke about their positions as human rights activists internationally and how stories and testimonies are important ways of docu-menting what really happens in marginalized communities in rural areas.

Farmworker families celebrated the completion of Home Ownership and Financial Management classes given by Telamon Corporations’ Housing Counselor Ismelda Rosario Ortega this past Septem-ber. Their certificates of completion sym-bolize a wonderful collaboration between NC FIELD, AFOP, and Telamon Corpora-tion in serving the migrant and seasonal farmworker families of North Carolina.

Summer 2011

SAVE the DATE: YouthSpeak Symposium 2011 Wed. November 30th, 2011 Kinston NC

YouthSpeak Symposium is a youth created and led event in which they are given the opportunity to voice their opinions, concerns, and experiences with members of the community. The event consists of four panel themes with youth directing panel discussions about issues such as child labor in farm work, access to education, at-risk youth, among others. There will also be an exhibition of photographs by youth photog-raphers and video screenings. The entire Kinston community is invited to participate.

Keep posted for venue details!

Toxic Free and FIELD Get Down and Dirty with CEFS Youth Gardening and SAF Documentary

Hats off to PJC youth Yesenia, Nef-tali, Mildre, and Elvis for sharing their sto-ries and raising awareness about the harms of pesticides for farmworker youth by par-ticipating in the filming of the documen-tary Overworked and Under Spray: Young Farm worker’s Pesticide Stories produced by Toxic Free NC’s Ana Duncan Pardo and Student Action with Farmworkers’ intern Abi Bisette. The six-minute documentary shares stories from young farm workers about re-sulting health effects from their exposure to pesticides in the fields, with commentary from health outreach and advocacy experts.

Great job guys!!

During the workshop everyone learned about composting, crop rotation, pesticide and in-secticide mitigation/alternatives, cover crops, dug for ginger root and harvested some pep-pers! Lunch was courtesy of Toxic Free NC.

You can view the documentary at www.youtube.com/toxicfreenc

Collaboration between Toxic Free NC, Lenoir MEP and NC FIELD en-abled migrant and seasonal youth and par-ents from eastern North Carolina to attend a fall planting session at the Center for En-vironmental Farming Systems in Goldsboro on Saturday, September 24th.

Afterwards, youth assisted with making the supplies list, choosing which seed and plants they would grow, as well as deciding on which method they preferred: cold frame or low tun-nels. Student leaders representing the differ-ent groups accompanied Billie Karel and staff to buy supplies for seven small gardening projects.

Community SpotlightThis Summer, NC FIELD families had the pleasure of taking housing fi-nance classes with Ismelda Rosario from Telemon Corp. Ismelda, originally from San Francisco de Macoris, Dominican Republic, has been actively working with the Latino community over the past three years

As Telamon Corp’s financial literacy in-structor, she feels her experiences as a Housing Counselor have helped her reach out to the community. In her own words: “I discover my art of helping people discov-er ways to help themselves and achieve their financial goals, by providing them with essential education and tools.”

In the future, Ismelda would like to finish her Master’s in Business Administration. Aside from her professional commitments, she would love to travel to amazing plac-es and continue meeting wonderful peo-ple. The NC FIELD community sends a big “Thank You!” to Ismelda for sharing her knowledge and dedication.

NC FIELD has wheels! A huge thank you to Grace Fellowship, Jimbo Perry, Tristan Bruner, and Wade, our trusty mechanic, for their assistance with the very generous donation of a 15 passenger van to help with transportation for NC FIELD and PJC activities!

Wake Forest GrantWake Forest University- School of Medicine and NC FIELD, Inc. received a grant from the National Children’s Cen-ter for Rural and Agricultural Health and Safety for a project titled, Youth Health Educator Program to Prevent Heat-Related Illness among Child Migrant and Seasonal Farmworkers.

This Youth Health Educator project is based on a community-academic partnership to address the following project goals:

1. Develop a Youth Health Educator program to reduce heat-related illness among child migrant and seasonal farm-workers and children who accompany their farmworker parents into the fields; 2. Implement, evaluate, and revise the Youth Health Educator program; and 3. Disseminate the revised Youth Health Educator program so that it can be used by other farmworker communities.

Media Team UpdateThe PJC Media Team spent this Sum-mer hard at work refining their photography and video skills. We learned about com-position and the “rule of thirds”, exposure techniques, and the basic elements of vi-sual storytelling. The Media Team aims to use photography and video to tell their stories, document NC FIELD events and be-come the “go to” photographers of Eastern NC’s farmworker community. To date, par-ticipants include: Jonathan, Milly, Adriana, Yesenia, Neftali, Jose, Noe, Elvis, and Peter, plus Jose R. and Antonio, who are also in-strumental in providing transportation.

Photos of Blunt St. housing project by Jonathan, Milly and Noe (L to R)

OVACIONES!Poder Juevenil Campesino

NC FIELD, Inc. 327 N. Queen Street, Suite 110 Kinston, NC 28501 email: Executivedirector@ncfield.org www.ncfield.orgMission: To create strategies and initiate collaborative actions that will promote justice and equality by

increasing access to opportunities for farm working communities in North Carolina. Goals: End child labor in agriculture Develop and create additional migrant educational programming specifically for unaccompanied minors and migrant children and youth Eliminate food scarcity among the farmworker communities Provide dignified housing for migrant farmworker families and unaccompanied youth

Chair: Peter Eversoll Co-Chair: Melissa Bailey Secretary: Rachel WrightTreasurer: Pedro Sanchez Executive Director: Emily Drakage Legal Counsel: Scott Brown

The Youth Council- Poder Juvenil Campesino - continues to develop me-dia for use in documentaries and photo exhibits as part of their efforts to raise awareness for child labor in agriculture. In 2010, they showed their photos and videos at the gallery ROOM 100 in Dur-ham, among other exhibits across North Carolina. Show some love and spread the word! They are selling their prints of their photos- all proceeds from sales go to pay for youth ou can find their work at:

www.ncfield.org Buy some excellent photography and support our youth activities!

Photos For Sale

PJC has been invited to be a part of The NC Youth Food Council (YFC) which aims to support and develop youth leadership that is specifically dedicated to building a sustainable, local food system across the state and driven by the needs, knowledge, and vision of young people committed to good food ac-cess and children’s wellness. During the fall of the school year of 2011-2012 these found-ing organizations will network and convene to develop an organizational plan. With funding, Phase II will begin in the spring of 2012, where outreach to broad membership and initia-tion of programming plus a public and/or policy campaign will begin. Other organizations participating are YES!, 4-H, the Inter-Faith Food Shuttle, RAFI, and CEFS.

Photos courtesy of: Jose Godinez, Ivan Rodriguez, Melissa Bailey and Peter Eversoll unless otherwise noted.

Youth photographer Jose Godinez had a photograph published in the Asso-ciation of Farmworker Opportunity Program’s book America’s Farmworker Children: Harvest of Broken Dreams. Below is the image in-cluded in the book- just one of his many excellent photos!