[[link removed]]
[link removed] [[link removed]]
Cruz Salucio (right), CIW senior staff member and farmworker, discusses the transformative success and expansion of the Fair Food Program in a class with students from the University of Michigan
2019 University of Michigan Advisory Committee report: “The Fair Food Program is the most comprehensive social responsibility program in the U.S.,” and the best thing that the University of Michigan could do in order to improve labor standards would be to “become a signatory to the Fair Food Program.”
Nola De Graaf, a current student at the University of Michigan: “The best part of this program is that it is an organization that amplifies the voices of workers, not attempting to speak over them but rather making them the forefront of the organization, something that is unfortunately not often done. I also love that there is a very set goal; joining the Fair Food Program. With this alliance between workers and students, it’s attainable and real, something that can make lasting, permanent change.”
A new initiative calling on universities to join the Fair Food Program is rapidly gaining momentum across the country.
Just last week, we shared an update from Yale University, where students are leading a movement urging the storied Ivy League university to become the first to join the Fair Food Program as a Participating Buyer. Now, following a multi-day campus visit from the CIW, that momentum is carrying over to the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, where hundreds of students are joining the growing campus-based campaign, leveraging their demand for fresh fruits and vegetables to expand the FFP to new fields where workers remain in desperate need of the program’s life-saving human rights protections.
For decades, the CIW has confronted the egregious human rights abuses that have plagued the agricultural industry, demanding modern, humane business practices that ensure the farmworkers who put food on our tables are treated with dignity and respect. To achieve that goal, the CIW partnered with consumers, growers, and buyers to forge the Presidential Medal-winning Fair Food Program — a groundbreaking model that has not only remedied abuses in participating fields, but actually prevented modern-day slavery, sexual violence, wage theft, retaliation, and more. Yet since the program’s launch in 2010, there has been a troubling rise in human rights violations on fields beyond the reach of the FFP’s industry-leading protections, including documented cases of modern-day slavery.
The need to dramatically expand the FFP’s reach is therefore more urgent than ever, and the new Fair Food University initiative aims to do just that. Over the course of the visit to Ann Arbor, more than 200 students took part in classroom presentations, luncheons, film screenings, panel discussions, and organizing meetings — trekking through growing mounds of snow and icy sidewalks to hear from the CIW and student allies.
[link removed] [[link removed]]
Students with the University of Michigan met with staff members of the CIW to jumpstart an effort for the university to join the Fair Food Program
During the UM campus visit, Michigan students learned how farmworkers with the CIW developed a cutting-edge analysis of the food supply chain, identifying where the power to guarantee farmworkers’ dignity truly lies: at the top of the massive food industry, with major produce buyers like Taco Bell and smaller institutional buyers such as the University of Michigan. In packed, often standing-room-only presentations, students, faculty, and staff heard from CIW staff member and farmworker leader Cruz Salucio, who described overcoming immense odds to forge — and ultimately scale — the Fair Food Program by building lasting partnerships with consumers, growers, and buyers alike.
The CIW visited about a dozen classes across a wide range of disciplines, including public health, education, drama, and food studies. In Spanish classes, students practiced their language skills while learning directly from CIW staff about the realities of agricultural labor and the strategic vision behind the Fair Food Program. In an introductory acting class at the School of Drama, students performed a popular education exercise often performed at farmworker community meetings in Immokalee, depicting the life of a farmworker whose rights are routinely violated by an abusive crewleader, discovering how theater has long served as a powerful tool for farmworkers to raise consciousness among workers and allies alike within the Campaign for Fair Food.
READ MORE [[link removed]]
Donate [[link removed]] Merch Store [[link removed]]
[link removed] [[link removed]] [link removed] [[link removed]] [link removed] [[link removed]] [link removed] [[link removed]]

Coalition of Immokalee Workers
110 S 2nd St
Immokalee, FL 34142
United States
If you believe you received this message in error or wish to no longer receive email from us, please unsubscribe: [link removed] .