Thanks to your generosity, the Fair Food Program has met its ambitious 2024 campaign goal of raising $2 million!
The program's unprecedented success since its launch in 2010 is a testament to the extraordinary passion and commitment of our community, and we are deeply grateful to all who contributed their time, effort, and resources over the past 15 years to make that success possible. Thanks to you, tens of thousands of farmworkers are empowered to be the frontline monitors of their own rights, and countless more workers will soon gain that power.
Our shared belief in the importance of building a global food supply chain free from extreme abuse -- abuses ranging from gender-based violence to modern-day slavery -- made it possible for us to reach our fundraising goal in 2024. But as we have shared over the past year in the pages of this website, the work of protecting fundamental human rights is not limited to agricultural fields here in the US. It is a global job, and news of the success of the Fair Food Program is ringing out today in workplaces around the globe, from sweatshops in Bangladesh and Lesotho to fishing trawlers in the North Sea off the coast of Scotland, animating workers in those far-flung places to travel to Immokalee to learn how to adapt and build the Fair Food Program in their own workplaces.
Indeed, recognized as the new gold standard for protecting human rights in global supply chains in the 21st century, the FFP has become a beacon of hope for low-wage workers around the US and the rest of the world.
As a result, the CIW’s story -- your story, our story -- has become an all-too-rare human rights success story that is capturing the imagination of millions of workers around the globe and driving the expansion of our work at an exponential rate. Most recently workers in India's sugar cane fields -- where the New York Times has chronicled truly outrageous abuses, including widespread debt bondage and forced hysterectomies for an estimated 100,000 women farmworkers -- have traveled to Immokalee to learn how workers can shift power relations in the workplace to protect their own basic human rights and labor protections in the fields.
Far too many workers who toil at the bottom of these supply chains remain vulnerable to egregious violations of their human rights including wage theft, harassment, gender-based violence, and even modern-day slavery. That's why a dream born in Immokalee's tomato fields is today a dream shared by millions of workers in the garment industry, fisheries, dairy, vineyards, and more.
One farm, one crop, one industry at a time, together we will stop these abuses and bring about a new day for millions of low-wage workers.
Onward to 2025, and a bright future for human rights!
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To date, we have raised $1,850,000 and we need just $150,000 more from Fair Food Program supporters to reach our $2 million goal! Remember, every gift made now will be matched 100%. In this joyous holiday season, we want to begin by offering our deepest gratitude for each and every donation we have received from supporters like you since we launched the Coalition of Immokalee Workers in a borrowed room from Our Lady of Guadalupe Church here in Immokalee over 30 years ago. Your support over the years has helped make it possible for the Coalition of Immokalee Workers’ Fair Food […]
Fair Food Nation, it is not too late! There is still time to make your contribution to the globally recognized and award winning Coalition of Immokalee Workers’ Fair Food Program. Together, we have accomplished so much in this year alone. From expanding the groundbreaking Fair Food Program to dozens of new farms in 23 states across the nation, to shaping federal farm and labor policy through the USDA and the USDOL, to protecting vulnerable workers in supply chains around the globe, there is so much for which we can all be proud and grateful. If you are one of hundreds […]
“Her name is Esperanza, or Hope, because we hope for a better world,” Lupe Gonzalo, a farmworker leader of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers said earlier this year in Palm Beach. “A world where we are all treated with dignity and respect as human beings.” Esperanza, the 15-foot tall animated farmworker puppet, debuted this past spring in the luxurious streets of Palm Beach during the CIW’s Farmworker Freedom Festival. Embodying the hope of farmworkers everywhere for a more modern, more human agricultural industry, Esperanza quickly caught the attention of Palm Beach’s residents and national media alike. From the Miami Herald’s […]
2024 was a particularly productive year for the national Campaign for Fair Food — kicking off this past spring with the three-day Farmworker Freedom Festival held in Palm Beach, FL and closing out this holiday season with our end-of-year fundraising campaign, backed for the first time ever by a generous matching challenge, whereby all gifts will be matched up to $2 million by the NoVo Foundation! Indeed, this past year provided many exciting opportunities for our faith and student allies to gather together, reflect, and build bonds of solidarity with farmworkers in their fight for fundamental human rights in the […]
Twenty years ago, the Presidential Medal-winning Fair Food Program was still a distant dream in the minds of farmworkers from Immokalee who, at the time, were on the cusp of signing the first-ever Fair Food agreement with Taco Bell, calling on the fast-food giant to take responsibility for the exploitation of farmworkers at the bottom of its supply chain. Driven by their lived experience in the fields — and backed by a national network of allies who shared their vision for long-overdue, worker-driven change — those farmworkers went on to sign with Taco Bell in March of 2005, setting […]
As hard as it may be to imagine, farmworkers on most farms in the US do not have guaranteed access to clean drinking water, bathrooms, shade, or even habitable housing. Working in the fields, farmworkers are all too often exposed to dangerous pesticides, sweltering summer heat, lightning storms and hurricanes — and if they complain, they can lose the jobs that mark the thin line between their families and abject poverty. To ensure the safety and wellbeing of all farmworkers on Fair Food farms, the FFP’s market-backed standards protect against all of these harsh working conditions. On Fair Food Program […]
On this International Human Rights Day, let’s take a moment to remember the millions of farmworkers across the planet for whom the idea of universal human rights remains, even today, a distant dream. According to Laura Elise Vasquez, Director of Complaint Resolution with the Fair Food Standards Council, “Some of the most challenging calls we get on the Fair Food Program hotline come from farmworkers on non-FFP farms.” Your gift this holiday season to the FFP will help ensure that we continue to expand the FFP to new farms and new states in the year ahead, and as a result, […]
This past year has been an extraordinary one for the Coalition of Immokalee Workers’ Fair Food Program and its model of Worker-driven Social Responsibility, marked by unprecedented growth and exciting new milestones achieved that would not have been possible without sustainers like you! Since this time last year, the CIW’s Fair Food Program has nearly doubled in size, both domestically and on the international front, meaning thousands of more workers today enjoy the program’s proven protections, and work in an environment of dignity and respect, than did just one year ago. And at the same time, the FFP and the […]
Sixty years later, are we still bound up in Dr. King’s “single garment of destiny”? Or have its ties worn thin? With Thanksgiving just over a week away – and initial preparations for the holiday feast already underway in homes across the country – it has perhaps never felt more important to pause, take a breath, and reflect on the meaning of the season. Thanksgiving is a time for stepping away from the rush and bustle of every day life and work, to put down our phones and close our laptops, and to focus on the things in life for which […]
A new scholarly paper by a team of environmental experts proposes the expansion of a model originally designed to protect global fisheries from depletion — known collectively as “Fishery Improvement Projects” (FIPs) — to include the protection of fishers’ human rights in the scope of their initiatives; Authors launch “call to action” proposing collaboration between FIPs and Worker-driven Social Responsibility (WSR) efforts with goal of “increas[ing] uptake and implementation of worker-driven, enforceable agreements, and mandatory HRDD [Human Rights Due Diligence] in seafood value chains” Summary: FIPs paper’s authors recognize WSR as uniquely effective for human rights enforcement in global supply chains, […]