Welcoming wreath workers amidst COVID-19
Staff and volunteers assemble nourishing, culturally relevant food boxes for wreath workers.
To protect the health and safety of migrant workers and our year-round community, this year we adapted the Welcome and Resource Center to a remote model and are again partnering with MaineHousing to provide shelter for migrant workers arriving in Maine who received a positive COVID-19 test, or had been exposed to the virus and needed a place to quarantine safely.
One major change from blueberry season is onsite COVID-19 testing available at the shelter where workers quarantine. About 350 workers in total passed through at least one of two hotel sites: one for workers who have just arrived and will be tested the next morning and a separate shelter for workers who have tested positive or been exposed to the virus. Mano en Mano has also continued to provide COVID-19 education, outreach, and social supports in the region.
At the testing and quarantine site, Mano en Mano staff welcomed workers just arriving to Maine and provided them with Know Your Rights information in Haitian Creole, Spanish or English about COVID-19 testing and sick pay so that workers would have the opportunity to ask questions, be better able to self-advocate, and know their options in the case of a positive test result or if they were asked to quarantine. In addition, staff and community volunteers provided workers with breakfast and lunch and connected them with Mano staff in Downeast Maine who continued to support workers throughout the remainder of the season through our Welcome and Resource Center.
This year, instead of physical centers in Columbia Falls and Machias a team of staff and volunteers coordinated food and clothing drops directly to worker housing. Anticipating the need after the blueberry harvest, staff conducted multilingual outreach to make sure workers at more than 7 work sites knew the plan ahead of time. These existing relationships proved crucial as workers began arriving sporadically from mid-October through the end of November and work was slow due to the irregularities associated with the pandemic.
With the season not yet complete, already over 1,000 people have received food boxes and 600 people have received warm clothing (collected from generous donors all the way from Eastport to Portland). Mano en Mano partnered with the Seacoast Mission, Presente Maine and Good Shepherd Food Bank to order culturally relevant fresh produce. Since we are sadly unable to create the hospitable in-person environment of the Welcome and Resource Center, we used worker feedback to focus on investing in nourishing food that migrant wreath workers would enjoy. One worker from Jamaica opened his food box and exclaimed, “Oh cool, I can actually use all of this!”
As the wreath season continues through December, Mano en Mano will provide ongoing support in Bangor and in Downeast for the duration of migrant workers’ time in Maine. We also want to ensure that workers are able to safely return to their home base and will connect them to information and/or resources to do so. We remind workers, staff, and members of the community that this work we do is not charity, but an effort to give workers what they are owed and entitled to and to fill a gap that exists because of organizational and systemic oppression.
These projects were made possible through generous contributions from our community and through a grant from the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) COVID-19 Health Equity Fund.