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Report for America is a national service program that places journalists into local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues and communities.

Farmworker & Landscaper Advocacy Project Gets Big Boost

Farmworker & Landscaper Advocacy Project
Farmworker & Landscaper Advocacy Project Logo

The Farmworker & Landscaper Advocacy Project just this week collected upwards of $30,000 in grant money to address the impacts of COVID-19. The group’s mission is to improve working conditions in low-income households including farmworkers, restaurant workers, and meat and poultry workers.

 

To date, the organization has distributed more than a half million dollars in direct cash distributions in the form of one-time $500 cash donations to more than 1,000 Latinos in the region.

 

Arlo Chapple works with the advocacy project and said the additional grants will make a big difference.

 

"I mean this money allows this population to stay afloat when it's incredibly hard," said Chapple. "You know, when you don't have access to the benefits that other residents have access to."

 

These funds will go to providing improved access to social services, as well as workers’ rights training and legal education. The organization can be contacted via their website or Facebook page.

 

  • Juanpablo Ramirez-Franco is a 2020 corps member for Report for Americaan initiative of the GroundTruth Project which is a national service program that places talented journalists in local newsrooms.

 

Juanpablo covers environmental, substandard housing and police-community relations. He’s been a bilingual facilitator at the StoryCorps office in Chicago. As a civic reporting fellow at City Bureau, a non-profit news organization that focuses on Chicago’s South Side, Ramirez-Franco produced print and audio stories about the Pilsen neighborhood. Before that, he was a production intern at the Third Coast International Audio Festival and the rural America editorial intern at In These Times magazine. Ramirez-Franco grew up in northern Illinois. He is a graduate of Knox College.