Help Migrants Access Mental Health Services

Dear Friends,

On Saturday, March 11th more than 8,500 people in Monterey Country woke up under evacuation orders and warnings, including roughly 1,700 residents — many of them farmworkers — from the unincorporated community of Pajaro, close to Watsonville.

The hardworking families of Pajaro have lost homes, cars, possessions, and livelihoods because of the levee breach. San Lorenzo Valley, Capitola, Soquel, and Watsonville residents already have a long way to go to recover from January’s mudslides, falling trees, flooding, and damaged roads, on top of the disaster of the last few weeks.

In the last week, the CARE Collaborative began the first of multiple clinics for the farmworkers in Pajaro impacted by the levee break and will continue these over the next few weeks. Over 1,000 people are in tents at the Pajaro fairgrounds. This is a good example of how important it is to build up capacity for disaster response in places that are at a high-risk for natural disasters and also present other risk factors. In the case of Watsonville and Pajaro, there is an ongoing public healthcare crisis due to lack of access to quality healthcare in the farmworker population. 

As our service demand continues to increase in CA, we're now calling upon our wonderful community of individuals committed to helping migrant farmworkers access quality trauma-informed care. Our communities in Watsonville and Pajaro need the solidarity and support of AWB and its community! 

If you would like to support the farmworkers of Pajaro, you can do so by donating to this project. You can also help us spread the word by forwarding this message to your community and/or get in touch with us for volunteer opportunities!

We appreciate you and everything you do for this work! 

In the Spirit of Service,