Service Learning Activism Log #2

Activism: This week, I alone represented our Global class at the Woman to Woman Conference at the Hope Community Center in Apopka. To be perfectly honest, I was very disappointed in the turnout from our class because it was my understanding that this or the AMA event, which no one went to either, would be the component that would connect our class's experiences to women, and I now hold significant reservations about how well we have managed to do so.


More importantly, however, YAYA definitely made the best out of what could have been a bad situation, considering that we had intended to mobilize ten YAYAs and only had six. We had a great time playing with the kids, and it was very gratifying to know that farmworker women could learn valuable information without having to worry about domestic constraints. This is the last week of our project, but I plan to stay involved with YAYA in the coming months, including the FLOC mobilization to North Carolina, so that's exciting. In terms of the group dynamics, I think that the group of YAYAs we mobilized was diverse enough to replicate coalitions of people from multiple backgrounds, as would be the case in transnational activism, and at this point, I consider most of them very close friends.


Reflection: Lack of access to childcare is a recurring problem in keeping working women oppressed, as their time outside of compulsory labor is spent occupied by the oft-discussed "second shift." Our role in the Woman to Woman conference exemplifies how coalition-building can offset the tremendous toll of managing personal responsibilities with practical politics. Like the "invisible women" discussed in Sharon Navarro's chapter of Women's Activism and Globalization, these women may face "language discrimination, discrimination because they are Mexican, and discrimination because they are women" (89). Their role in the workforce and at home is delegitimated, but the problems they face in both spheres— sexual harassment, domestic violence, issues with reproductive justice, and more—can be offset in some ways through education and community-building amongst themselves, as the work that AMA and the Hope CommUnity Center have been doing indicates. 


Reciprocity: As I've discussed throughout these logs, this project has left a lasting impression on me, not only through learning about organizing and working better in groups, which is an invaluable skill that I was definitely previously lacking, but also in instilling a passion for YAYA and farmworker/labor rights. I cannot say enough positive things about the experiential aspects of this project. While I had expected the aspects of the class focusing on women organizing globally/transnationally to be more apparent or stressed in some ways, learning to cooperate, mince words while remaining decisive and assertive in my communication, and generally just meet people where they're at to a greater extent has been much more important, ultimately lasting progress for me.

Works Cited

Navarro, Sharon A. "Las Mujeres Invisibles/The Invisible Women."Women's Activism and Globalization: Linking Local Struggles and Transnational Politics. By Nancy A. Naples and Manisha Desai. New York: Routledge, 2002. 83-98. Print.

Girls Like Us Response

"Many girls, even in this country [emphasis mine], are growing up in a society that does not provide real and viable opportunities for the future. At the same time, they're living in a culture that increasingly teaches them that their worth and value are defined by their sexuality. Parallels can be found between girls in poverty in this country and girls in poverty internationally, as well as with girls growing up over one hundred years ago. In an article on the commercial sexual exploitation of girls and the abolitionist movement in Victorian England, author Deborah Gorham writes of a young woman who "allowed herself to be entrapped in a French brothel because life had given her little reason to believe that any genuinely satisfactory possibility existed for her. In a society that told a girl who had no possessions that her chastity, at least, was a 'precious possession,' some young girls might well have been led to believe that they might as well sell that possession to the highest bidder." If the word chastity were replaced by sexuality or body, then this paragraph could easily have been written about commercially sexually exploited and trafficked girls today in the United States" (82).

As I read Rachel Lloyd, I find myself becoming increasingly frustrated at the disempowerment she clearly believes is not only inherent to the forcible domestic trafficking of young girls, but also sex work in general. Though that passage is concerned with "girls," the fact remains that she talks about sex work as an absolute indignity, the universal product of girls not believing they have more to offer the world than their "bodies." In flashing to memories of herself as a young girl, scared and exploited, Lloyd seems to imply that her story is the norm, or worse, that she got off easy. Part of this discourse is explaining that prostitution often includes forcible victimization in the form of unreported rape. Often, when rape is reported, it is not taken seriously by people in power, leading to a hierarchy that treats prostitutes as less than human (126). Yet rather than question the neoliberal economic policies that force girls/women to feel that prostitution is desirable or at least passable labor that involves informed consent, or engage with a discourse that dehumanizes women in any way, regardless of their choices, Lloyd resorts to comments about women lacking self-respect due to the culture, and in no way recognizes those choices as affirmative. Furthermore, she uses the crutch of Western difference and American exceptionalism to reaffirm the arbitrary division of "us" vs. "them," "over here" and "over there."

Rachel Lloyd's perspective is clearly shaping a macro-level discourse of consent and the universality of sex work as social ill. Human trafficking and sex work as viewed from an abolitionist perspective have become fashionable social issues, which is how we end up with articles such as "Child Sex Trafficking Growing in the U.S.: 'I Got My Childhood Taken From Me'." In presenting human trafficking from the perspective of Demi Moore, a celebrity face for abolitionism, as well as through the lens of conservative politics, as with the quotation from a Republican representative, this article is complicit in the meaning-making of sex trafficking victims as the products of a broken system or flawed family structures. Because she is so young, obviously the girl discussed is not presented as having a choice, yet I find Girls Like Us and articles of this ilk to be much too interested in this poverty-based, possibly racialized narrative, as though it is enough to say that not receiving enough love at home because of financial constraints is a nuanced analysis. The individual reasons should be delved into more thoroughly, as that determines so much about how people respond to this choice discourse.

Works Cited

Khan, Huma. "Child Sex Trafficking Growing in the U.S.: 'I Got My Childhood Taken From Me'" ABC News. ABC News Network, 05 May 2010. Web. 9 Apr. 2012. <http://abcnews.go.com/US/domestic-sex-trafficking-increasing-united-states/story?id=10557194>.

Service Learning Activism Log #1.

1) Activism: This past week, I went to the Viva la Causa movie screening, and as a whole, our class took the big trip to Fellsmere for our community garden project! It was very productive. In terms of community partner contact, we were all divided into cars with at least one YAYA core member, so we were able to form more meaningful, intentional bonds between the class and YAYA. I also attended the YAYA meeting and we debriefed on our successes and failures. Personally, I think we can always engage with the communities we are associating with more, but that was collectively considered a success more than other aspects of the trip. We all agreed class members could have respected the space a bit better, especially with regard to cell phone usage and constant, mindful engagement with those around us. This week, though the coalition building aspect of our project was conducted relatively without incident, we did have to branch out beyond what has become the safe bubble of our class sphere, and that requires engaging with people who we don't know and may not even be able to communicate with without translators. These kinds of social discomfort are no doubt routine in the scheme of global activism. In general, we are still struggling with finding the women in our project, though we were all very inspired by Yolanda and the work she does, along with the several other strong women who make the community garden possible. Regardless, this project is in no way losing steam just because its largest component is over. We're looking forward to the Woman 2 Woman Conference and establishing those connections with a greater degree of clarity.
2) Reflection: Our community garden helped me put into perspective the impact of what we've discussed about fair food. Daniel's discussion about working to learn how to tend the garden through trial and error was fascinating, but also very inspiring. As we have discussed before, one way to offset the incredible toll that farm work takes on the laborer, especially in their sense of morale when enduring terrible working conditions, is through "produc[ing] food for local consumption" (Desai 24). Being a part of that, being able to clear a huge plot of land and then see what a garden looks like when it's done, which is how the plot we cleared will look with any luck, was a really great feeling. The community garden perfectly incapsulates the localization movement that has been a response to globalization, and it was a very personally rewarding thing to be involved in.

3) Reciprocity: I learned that radishes grow in twenty-two days! Listening to Daniel talk about gardening was so interesting and I honestly could have stayed much longer, had it not started raining. Beyond that, being in YAYA has allowed me to build relationships with my classmates and my community, and I see it building my leadership potential in new and exciting ways for the future. At the YAYA meeting on Sunday, Nena, Sara, Cole, and I volunteered to plan a benefit show for the grant YAYA is trying to learn, and not only will that allow me to interact with many of my friends from the music and social community in Orlando, but it will also build my event planning skills for future fundraising and nonprofit work.

Works Cited

Desai, Manisha. Women's Activism and Globalization: Linking Local Struggles and Transnational Politics. 

By Nancy A. Naples and Manisha Desai. New York: Routledge, 2002. Print.

Campus Engagement: Take Back the Night

Unlike previous years of my involvement in Women's Studies, I intentionally took a very active interest in participating in Take Back the Night. I went to a NOW planning meeting for preparing the banner previous to this actual event and learned that the new focus of Take Back the Night was going to stress violence against people, not violence against women, a marked change that I personally deeply appreciated. My specific purpose in attending was to table for YAYA, so my experiences were primarily shaped by my goal of fundraising and interacting with my immediate community in search of donations. In this way, Take Back the Night is an ideal event, both for tabling and for campus engagement, because so many of the people I care for and appreciate most in the progressive community were there, offering multiple opportunities for connection and education about YAYA and our class project.

Not surprisingly, my favorite aspect of the evening was Claudia Schippert's speech on gender/racialized violence. Much of her speech mirrored a talk we had in Queer Theory that morning about our text, Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times, which discussed the case of "mistaken identity" when Sikhs were killed in Islamaphobic hate crimes during the immediate days after 9/11, due to the "shared" possession of turbans. There is something very wrong when in an effort to construct oneself as the mainstreamed, harmless brown person, one must also buy into and continue the perpetuation of another as the legitimately threatening other, yet fear does terrible things to people. This echoes Geraldo Rivera's victim-blaming comments about Trayvon Martin and his hoodie, which in his mind, were intended to protect black and brown boys through pragmatism, but instead, put the burden of proof on each of their individual shoulders to tow a line of white, middle class respectability, just in order to not be taken as a serious threat to all those around you. As Schippert pointed out, Zimmerman probably did see Trayvon Martin as a genuine threat because he interpreted a complex matrix of social and behavioral cues to conjure the image of a hood rat kid "up to no good." His overzealous vigilanteism is protected by lack because this racism is so deeply imbedded into the culture as to be unconscious and possibly not even outwardly malicious, making it even more insidious and different to detect. Worse than that, we are all implicated in this system of violence, as it operates with and through risk cues that cause each and every person, especially women, to constantly create a hierarchy of how threatening a person or situation is, often perpetuating racist stereotypes in the process. Meditating on this recent violence makes the need for cross-cultural understanding even within local communities so much more obvious and urgent.

Word Count: 463.

SL Proposal (Revised)

Date: 3/15/12 
To: Professor Tweed 
From: Patricia Parker 
Re: WST 4415 Service Learning Proposal

Mission Statement: To fight for agricultural justice and women’s rights in the farmworker community through fundraising and volunteering with YAYA and communication and cooperation with our forthcoming global partner.

Organizational Structure:

Secretary: maintains records (including attendance) and Google group

Scheduler: maintains calendar and plans event attendance.

Task-based committees (headed by a Committee Chairperson who acts as liaison for the committee and ensures meeting efficiency)

Task-based committees (headed by a Committee Chairperson who acts as liaison for the committee and ensures meeting efficiency)

Community partner liaisons (2): communicate with community partners and attend YAYA meetings

Global partner liaisons (2): work with fundraising committee

Ethics Committee (3): ensures mindful action, implements “three strike” policy

Three Strike Policy:

• Failure to complete a task or attend a designated event results in one strike

• First and second strikes result in voting restrictions

• Three strikes results in a meeting with the ethics committee and Professor Tweed Fundraising Organizers (4): responsible for coordinating an event and/or delegating responsibilities to other members to ensure that we are able to provide at least $190 (for food), 19 rakes and 19 shovels to the YAYA community garden project.

Members are accountable for their own attendance and participation. If a member is unable to attend an event, she or he must notify the scheduler. The Ethics Committee and “three strike” policy were conceived to deal with situations where a member fails to meet these standards. Democratically structured, our group focuses on working with our community. We have modeled our organizational strategy based on NGOs who use task-based committees to foster efficient goal achievement. Women, Food, and Agriculture Network (WFAN)-- as discussed in Women’s Activism and Globalization-- employ a similar structure, fostering personal responsibility in order  to “instigate change” by building community and sustaining relationships with farmworkers (144). Our ethics committee is cognate to the UN, in that it will monitor the efficacy and ethical compliance of our project. Just as in “Unlikely Godmother,” Margaret Snyder characterizes the United Nations as a “godmother,” which acted as a guardian and advocate for women’s issues (25). We are facing the global challenge of migrant farmworker rights based on local realities, specifically the lack of resources to farmworkers in the community of Fellsmere, FL. We will be participating in discussion that takes place on a global level with our global partner. By building solidarity between our local and global partners, and ourselves, we will either discover or develop new ideas to cater to the needs of the farmworker population.

Every member is accountable for his or her own attendance and participation. If a member is unable to attend an event, they must notify the scheduler. The Ethics Committee and “three strike” policy were conceived to deal with situations in which a member fails to be accountable for themselves.

Group effectiveness will be measured by involvement of the majority of class members at each event, as well as our ability to fulfill each of the goals we have set. We are also considering the individual gains of each class member, outside of the group as a whole, to be an accomplishment of overall group effectiveness. This includes phone banking with YAYA, fundraising, and planning. We will also strive to maintain sincere communication and ethical interactions with each other and our community partners. We will assess ourselves via individual surveys on group effectiveness.

Community Partner/Global Theme Profile:

We propose to address the larger systemic issues of the treatment of farmworkers, with an emphasis on women farmworkers. 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 those who produce the food equal access to the products they produce. As the price of food increases and becomes 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 key that the community eats the food it grows. Local production and consumption can also indirectly address situations of "unsustainable exploitation of workers," who are denied not only equal access to food, but also other resources, such as safe housing and acceptable working conditions (Two Years 1). By establishing themselves as producers of their own food and giving recognition to both the unpaid and poorly paid labor, farmworkers can pave the way for change in regard to equal access and fair treatment.

We have not yet been able to contact a global partner. However, when we do, we will be able to find out more about their needs and goals as they relate to our own and therefore participate in both shared learning and activism.

By working in solidarity with YAYA, we are supporting activism enacted “to change the oppressive social, political and economic conditions of farmworkers” (“About”). Human rights violations such as those our local farmworkers face are worldwide issues and are experienced in many forms across many communities. While YAYA is “[i]nspired by the principles of nonviolence of the farmworker movement,” we are inspired by the efforts of YAYA and the organization’s slant towards working with, not simply for farmworker communities (“About”). As we work with each other and with YAYA, we will cultivate ethical activism through focusing on our communicative and social interactions.

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).

3. The Project Proposal:

Our intention for this project is to forge relationships with farmworker communities on a local to global level, with a focus on women and how their lives are impacted by the work they do. We will accomplish our goals by dividing them up between the various aforementioned committees. We will begin developing a relationship with our local community partner, YAYA, by attending meetings and fulfilling their requested needs for gardening tools and long sleeve shirts. We will also be participating in the Fellsmere Community Garden Event, where we will be gardening and sharing and preparing a meal, while also learning from one another. We will determine the needs of our global partners through email and meet whatever need(s) that they express at that time.

We will complete our service-learning project via our combined resources as individuals, the resources we have available as UCF students, and the resources of our Orlando community. Through the expertise of YAYA and FWAF, we will be able to better understand the ways in which we can use our resources to best serve the needs of the farmworker community. We will be communicating as a group in order to continuously reevaluate our initial methodology, resources, and group organizational structure, in order to best serve our goals.

One of our immediate goals in supporting YAYA and FWAF in the Fellsmere community gardening day is to fundraise one shovel and one rake per student. Another goal is to fundraise the cost per person for our visit, which includes meals and transportation. These goals are feasible because we have access to different types of resources that will help our fundraising efforts, such as on-campus technology to create fundraiser advertisements, as well as access to various campus organizations that may support our fundraising events. Our most important goal is to support our community partner and their sustainable relationship building with farmworker communities. Our fundraising efforts will provide the Fellsmere community with the tools that they currently need and will use in the future. We will also be providing labor within the Fellsmere community garden and helping with the upkeep of the plots, a service that FWAF has asked YAYA and our Global class to provide. Through this project, we hope to help YAYA strengthen their established relationship with the Fellsmere community, and that through our collaborative efforts, we will create a sustainable relationship with our community partner.

Timeline:

1. Attend YAYA meetings – Sundays at 6:30pm 
2. Fundraising events – dates TBD 
3. Fellsmere Community Garden Day – March 31st  
4. Debriefing meeting – date TBD

Works Cited

Desai, Manisha. Women's Activism and Globalization: Linking Local Struggles and Transnational Politics. By Nancy A. Naples and Manisha Desai. New York: Routledge, 2002. 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.

Snyder, Margaret. "Unlikely Godmother: The UN and the Global Women's Movement." Ed. Aili Mari. Tripp. Global Feminism: Transnational Women's Activism, Organizing, and Human Rights. Ed. Myra Marx. Ferree. 1st ed. New York: New York UP, 2006. 24-50. 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: 1606

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

Urbanization Glossary Definition