CalAgrAbility staff attended South Monterey County's annual Health Fair on August 16th, hosted by the Community Action Partnership in Soledad. Other organizations that attended were the Department of Pesticide Regulations, Agricultural Labor Relations Board, Center for Employment Training, the Multiple Sclerosis Quality of Life Project, and many more. About 300 people attended the event, and many people were interested in learning about CalAgrAbility.
On August 9th, CalAgrAbility partnered with Alexandra Fallon from Arthritis Foundation Central Coast to develop and translate an arthritis info sheet into Spanish. Alexandra and her team delivered these flyers at the Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula Health Fair where they were received by over 200 employees from Tanimura and Antle. Arthritis Foundation also went to the fields of Castroville, Salinas, and Watsonville to pass out the flyers in order to create awareness and provide help and support to the agricultural industry. Over 150 arthritis novelas and flyers were also distributed to migrant farmworkers from Ocean Mist, and were well-received. Ocean Mist will continue passing out these flyers and novelas to reach over 700 migrant workers.
CalAgrAbility attended the Binational Health Week Coalition Meeting in French Camp on August 30th. The coalition meets to bring fairs and educational events to a central platform to educate the community about resources available. A free life insurance program by the Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company was introduced at the meeting.
CalAgrAbility was interviewed by the UC Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources to create a Spanish heat illness awareness video and article. Several tips and recommendations were given in order to help farmworkers protect themselves from heat illness. The article can be found here in Spanish: http://ucanr.edu/sites/Spanish/noticias/?uid=6890&ds=199
Submitted by Esmeralda Mandujano