Today, on Giving Tuesday, we launch our end-of-year campaign — a moment to honor all who have stood with Immokalee’s farmworker community over the years, and to reflect on the challenges ahead as we redouble our efforts to expand the groundbreaking Fair Food Program with your support.
Before we ask you to give, we want to share why many already do:
“Everyone deserves to earn a decent wage, be safe performing their job, have decent housing, access to medical care and be free from all types of harassment. My monthly donation helps to ensure that the Fair Food program can continue and grow to support workers who have historically been without the workplace protections that I take for granted.”
-Vicki
“I believe that employers all the way up the supply chain must keep their workers’ health and best interests in mind.”
-Barbara
“There are many valid approaches to addressing poverty and injustice, but worker-driven solutions show unique potential for long term progress. And the CIW is the poster child for worker-driven solutions.”
-Anonymous
These voices say it best. They remind us why we fight — and why your support matters.
For the past 15 years, workers and consumers together have proven what many said was impossible: that human rights, enforced through Worker-driven Social Responsibility, can transform the most dangerous workplaces in American agriculture.
Since its launch in 2010, the Fair Food Program (FFP) has expanded at a pace few could have imagined. In just the past two years, FFP protections reached thousands more workers at more than 30 new farms, across 13 new states. And since its inception, the Program has delivered over $50 million in Fair Food Bonuses to farmworkers — dollars added directly into workers’ pockets earned through the hard-fought, and historic, Campaign for Fair Food. That money exists because people like you answered the farmworkers’ call and demanded a new kind of food — Fair Food — from the most powerful companies in the industry.
The result of farmworker/consumer alliance? A proven model that has eliminated forced labor, sexual violence, and life-threatening abuses on participating farms — and well-earned recognition from the White House and the United Nations, the USDA and the USDOL, the MacArthur Foundation and the New York Times.
And yet, outside the Fair Food Program, a human rights crisis continues to deepen.
Forced labor is on the rise. Record heat is turning farm work into the country’s deadliest occupation. And just months ago, a major ProPublica investigation shone a bright light on Operation Blooming Onion — the largest modern-day slavery ring in U.S. history — uncovered by the CIW and brought to justice by federal prosecutors resulting in two dozen convictions. In their follow-up, ProPublica named the Fair Food Program as the only proven solution to prevent such extreme abuse:
“It’s very clear, supported by the data, that nothing works to end forced labor except the Fair Food Program or some other variation of worker-driven social responsibility.”
– Susan Marquis, Princeton University
We can take pride in what we’ve built together. But we can’t stop here.
This Giving Tuesday, we are asking you to help fuel a new chapter of growth, protection, and transformation. In the coming weeks, we’ll share how your gift directly supports:
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Expansion of the Fair Food Program to more farms and more crops, now spanning 21 states, Chile, and South Africa
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Scaling of the Worker-driven Social Responsibility model into new industries, bringing the same protections to garment workers, dairy workers, construction workers, and more
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The CIW’s answer to a growing food insecurity crisis in Immokalee, where thousands of the workers who harvest America’s food are struggling to access healthy food for their own families
DONATE NOW
This holiday season, as we gather around tables filled with the food that farmworkers harvest, we invite you to once again stand with them in their fight for dignity and justice. Let’s build the future we know is possible — where the all the food that nourishes us is grown in fields free of abuse, exploitation, and fear.
Help us make all food Fair Food.
With gratitude,
The Coalition of Immokalee Workers
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