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Rural Poverty Program Underway
You’ll never forget the look they give you when you hand them a warm blanket, a jacket, a pair of shoes or some used clothing. Their expressions of happiness and gratitude are beyond description as they cradle your gift in their arms. Poverty like this is so common in third world countries. One Family has seen it first hand in the aftermath of the war in Bosnia and Croatia. This time, however, when we were giving out these warm blankets and jackets we weren’t in a third world country. We were in our own country… right here in our own state! One Family has long been aware of the difficult living conditions that farm workers are enduring right here in California … almost on our doorstep. The title “Farm Worker” is synonymous with hard work, low income and impoverished living conditions. Eighty percent of the farm workers in California come from Mexico so it would be easy to dismiss their situation as something they chose to do. There is a lot of political debate about farm worker rights and their value with strong opinions on both sides of the issue. We see the farm workers as hard working people who live near us and can use some help. Last Fall One Family joined in a program with the East Bay Depot for Creative Reuse and the California Wellness Foundation to provide some basic assistance to them. Since the county’s recycling/reuse program provides a natural source of materials, our task became one of logistics. We identified locations in Dixon, Trinity County, Oakdale and Stockton as places |
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Above - Linda Levitsky, Director of the East Bay Depot for Creative Reuse and Mark Porter help organize a mountain of sleeping bags, bedding, tents, tarps, shoes, heavy socks and heavy coats that were collected in a drive called “Parkas for Pakistan”
Below - Volunteers setup pallets for loading into the container. Even the wood in the pallets will be put to use. |
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Photo by Omar Vega Oakland Tribune |
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support which turned into many shipping containers full of humanitarian aid flowing from Northern California to little villages and refugee camps where the larger aid organizations overlooked. Earlier this year we went back to Bosnia to check up on “our families” and to talk with some of the people who are still actively working to help. We weren’t surprised to find that progress is being made but very slowly. The country still has an unemployment rate of 48% in the |
