Have you thought about who grows your food? The answer is farmworkers and a great percentage are Latino. Since the COVID-19 pandemic started, these farmworkers worked without the option of staying home.
Taking a day off implies a lack of income for them to pay rent and sustain their families. At a time when the federal efforts to mitigate the virus were not reaching the farmworker community, the Grower-Shipper Association of Central California joined forces with Clinica de Salud del Valle de Salinas and stepped in with an effort to protect these essential farmworkers.
We showed that we prioritized the most important workers, who put themselves in the front lines.
Luis Alejo, Monterey County Supervisor
Aiming to vaccinate at least 90,000 people, GSA has delivered 40,000 vaccines to essential farmworkers. Hundreds of volunteers, farmers, and medical personnel used their weekends to make sure their workers remained healthy. They understood the importance of farmworkers and showed that vaccinating essential farmworkers at scale can be achieved with discipline and collaboration.
