Service Learning Proposal

Date: 2/23/12
To: Professor Tweed
From: Patricia Parker
Re: WST 4415 Service Learning Proposal

Mission Statement: To engage in local-to-global activism by supporting sustainable relationship-building alongside members of the farm working community, the Youth and Young Adult Network of the National Farm Worker Ministry (YAYA), and La Via Campesina. Through communication and cooperation we will strive to work with our community partners towards the shared aim of agricultural justice. Furthermore, we intend to make connections from the local farmworker community to the global food sustainability movement.

Organizational Structure:

• Task-based committees     
• Hold members accountable to completion of assigned tasks
• Maintain effective communication with group members and community partners
• Committee Chairperson: liaison for committee
• Meeting facilitator     
• Ensure meetings run smoothly and in a timely matter  
• Hold meetings with Committee Chairpersons
• Co-liaisons
• Communicate with community partners
• Attend YAYA meetings
• Secretary     
• Record keeping
• Attendance
• Ethics Committee     
• Ensure mindful enacting of project
• Oversee three strike policy    
• Failure to complete task or attend a designated event results in one strike
• First and second strikes result in voting restrictions 
• Three strikes result in a meeting with the Ethics Committee and Professor Tweed to discuss the member’s role and future participation in the project

By conceptualizing the issues faced by farmworkers as systemically correlated with the adverse effects of globalization, we are modeling ourselves from the Network of Maquila Workers Rights in Central America discussed by Nancy A. Naples, as Maquila workers also face oppression in the workforce based on flawed neoliberal policies (273). In this vein, our group is democratically structured and focuses on working with, rather than for our community. In the spirit of feminist NGOs that have come before us, we endeavor to work as professionals within a committed network of organizers, activists, and farmworkers to prioritize an ethic of communal involvement and service. We have chosen a model that stresses personal accountability, which is imperative to success in any cooperative situation, and we are organizing by committees with leadership positions to prioritize personal strengths, but avoid stringent hierarchy.

Our group’s effectiveness shall be assessed through measures of active participation, thoughtful communication, and shared aims of members, which work together to create group cohesion. We will also critically assess our effectiveness by considering how well we work in solidarity with our community partners and demonstrate feminist organizing as exemplified in course materials.

Community Partner/Global Theme: We propose to address the larger systemic issues of the treatment and unfair conditions of farm workers, focusing on women farm workers. We know that “women produce 70% of the food on earth but they are marginalized and oppressed by neoliberalism and patriarchy” (What Is 1). These systems of oppression often deny farm workers and food producers basic and equal access to the food they produce. As the price of food increases and food is scarcer, women become malnourished, “as they eat last after providing for their children and family members” (Desai 21). One possible way of addressing this issue is to “produce food for local consumption” (Desai 24). To lay a foundation for both environmental and production sustainability, it is crucial that the community eats the food it grows.

In joining YAYA’s Community Garden Project in Fellsmere, we will work side by side with the local farm worker community to create not just a source of pesticide-free food for the community, but, more importantly, to collaborate in developing a space for the community to interact. Through our group’s involvement in the Project we are also working toward the goal of fostering solidarity between the Orlando and Fellsmere communities, setting the foundation for a connection which will hopefully outlast this project.

We seek to engage and collaborate with our global partner, La Via Campesina, and to effectively connect our local work with global efforts toward agricultural justice and solidarity among multiple communities. Throughout this project, weekly email with the La Via Campesina will clarify how our progress works in accord with the organization’s needs.


Relation to Goals and Objectives for the Course: Because our class concerns the ways in which globalization and its discontents disproportionately affect minority groups, working with farmworkers is a way of putting the theory of our class directly into practice through a cooperative project that focuses on community organizing. In her essay, “The Challenges and Possibilities of Transnational Feminist Praxis,” published in the book Women’s Activism and Globalization: Linking Local Struggles and Transnational Politics, Nancy A. Naples states that many feminist NGOs are “transformed from advocates to professionals serving the needs of neoliberal states” (274). Our project is based on the exchange of communal knowledge and experience to grow and learn with the constituency we are serving, situating us as professionals working alongside them, rather than advocates speaking on their behalf or appealing to more powerful forces in pursuit of monetary dispensations. In the process, we are learning about the transnational modality of mobilization, while also stressing that our proposed efforts should work in concert with the expressed needs of the community, again emphasizing a “professional” versus “advocate” role.

One of the most important aspects of the project is learning about and replicating the structure of an organization that does this kind of work on a global scale. The measure of our success lies not necessarily with a perfectly executed project, but rather, with lessons regarding cooperation that come from both its successes and failures. This sets it apart from normal, task-oriented activist work and situates it squarely within the discourse of service learning. We cannot succeed if we discursively displace the community we are working with by, as Trinh Minh-ha put it, “[inventing] needs” for them, so joining YAYA’s previously established project is an efficient, equitable solution (54).

Project Proposal: We plan to work with YAYA on their various events, specifically during Farmworker Awareness Week.

Through working together actively and effectively as a group, we plan to tackle this service learning project by breaking up into task-based committees that address specific facets of our project in a focused manner. While initial jobs are divvied out based on personal interest and skill, we seek to learn collaboratively with and from each other through engaging roles and tasks which may be new to us and supporting each other through the process. We are using communication tools such as social media and email to make decisions and share feedback, ensuring total inclusion. To create longevity of our project’s objectives, we will focus on educating ourselves about our community partners and the local-to-global issues our project encompasses. We will foster sustainable relationship-building by educating ourselves first – by participating in human interactions and talking directly with the community as we work together.

Building on our community partner YAYA’s existing relationship with the farm worker community, we intend to learn the most effective way of utilizing our local resources in order to maximize our outreach. Through this bond, we aspire to grow as individuals, as well as develop building blocks for better understanding of global and transnational feminist issues.


Project Timeline:

1. February 22: Initial contact with Lariza Garzon of YAYA to confirm partnership
2. February 24: Contact Global Partner 
3. March 1: In-class presentation by YAYA 
1. The historical events that have led to the current oppressive conditions of the agricultural industry
2. Solidarity (sustainable relationship), privilege, power dynamics, etc.
3. March 10: Fundraising Event
4. March 17: Fundraising Event 
5. March 31: Participate in YAYA’s Community Garden Project
1. 8 am Depart Orlando from NFWM office
2. 10 am Arrive To Fellsmere
3. 10:15 am Welcome, introductions and instructions
4. 10:45 am Gardening begins!
5. 1:00 pm Lunch (vegetarian options available)/ short soccer game
6.  2:00 pm Back to gardening!
7. 4:30 pm Debrief
8. 5:15 pm Dinner
9. 6:00 pm Depart Fellsmere
10. 8:00 pm Arrive to Orlando at NFWM Office
11. Date TBD: Debriefing meeting 

Works Cited

Desai, Manisha. "Transnational Solidarity: Women's Agency, Structural Adjustment, and Globalization."
Women's Activism and Globalization: Linking Local Struggles and Transnational Politics. By Nancy A. Naples and Manisha Desai. New York: Routledge, 2002. 15-33. Print.

Naples, Nancy A. "The Challenges and Possibilities of Transnational Feminist Praxis." Women's Activism and Globalization: Linking Local Struggles and Transnational Politics. By Nancy A. Naples and Manisha Desai. New York: Routledge, 2002. 267-81. Print.

Minh-ha, Trinh T. Woman, Native, Other: Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism. 1st ed. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1989. Print.

“Two Years After the Events…” La Via Campesina: International Peasant’s Movement. La Via Campesina International Peasant’s Voice. 12 January 2012. Web. 23 February 2012.

“What is La Via Campesina?” La Via Campesina: International Peasant’s Movement. La Via Campesina International Peasant’s Voice. 9 February 2011. Web. 23 February 2012.

Word Count: 1265