COVID-19 Shelters for Migrant Workers

Mano en Mano assists farmworkers arriving in Maine for the the blueberry harvest

Mano en Mano staff pose outside of the hotel shelter during the blueberry season.

Concha sweetbread homemade by a local community member for quarantined workers.

Essential migrant agricultural workers have continued to travel to Maine to pick and process our food and prepare holiday wreaths. Beginning with the blueberry harvest in August, Mano en Mano partnered with MaineHousing to provide shelter for farmworkers who received a positive COVID-19 test, or had been exposed to the virus and needed a place to quarantine safely. The shelter was staffed by Spanish and Haitian Creole speakers who also lived at the hotel and worked hard to support workers and let them know that they were not alone during this extraordinarily trying time. 

The COVID-19 pandemic and exposure among essential workers has created an especially stressful and frustrating scenario for migrant workers coming to Maine. Instead of earning overtime in the especially short blueberry season, workers who were sick or exposed were unable to work, worried about their health, and still had bills and travel costs to pay. Even sick pay did not correspond with or account for piecemeal work and the overtime nature of these traditionally high-pay, short-term harvests. 

At the shelter, Maine Mobile Health Program (MMHP) provided medical care through their staff and partners like Northern Light Health, including daily check-ins for all quarantined workers. Workers were also provided with three meals a day, including a home-cooked, hearty, and nourishing dinner cooked by volunteers. In many cases, immigrants within our community cooked for the mostly immigrant workers staying at the shelter. Because of this outpouring of community support, workers were able to enjoy local Jamaican, Puerto Rican, Haitian, Mexican, and Colombian food. 

In addition, an advocacy team worked to connect workers to local resources including helping individuals apply for financial assistance through Mano en Mano’s Estamos Aquí Fund and other relief funds. Individuals quarantined at the shelter also received toiletries and other personal necessities along with access to art supplies, herbal medicinal care packages from local volunteers, TV channels in Spanish and Haitian Creole, English classes on-site and educational services for children over Zoom. 

For the more than six weeks that encompassed the blueberry harvest, over 100 workers stayed at the COVID-19 shelter. Now with one season under their belts, a team of 13 has again hit the ground running in Bangor to support workers currently arriving for the wreath season. Mano en Mano also received a grant from the Department of Health and Human Services COVID-19 Health Equity Fund, and has used this grant to provide COVID-19 education, outreach, and social supports in the region, as well as to purchase and outfit a vehicle to be able to safely provide transportation to people who need to quarantine.