Each year students from Cornell University have an opportunity to take a class which focuses on migrant workers. It is an introductory, interdisciplinary course on the history and contemporary reality of migrant labor. The emphasis is on migrant laborers in the United States with a primary (but not exclusive) focus on agricultural workers in central and upstate New York. The course is a service learning course: that is, it combines weekly seminar sessions with weekly service work, intellectual labor with experiential labor, theory and practice. FLSNY has participated in this class by offering service-learning opportunities for the students.  This year we were very fortunate to have 5 students volunteer in 3 projects. 

Building a Comprehensive Media Contact List and Updating FLSNY's News Page:   Ed Fallon & Tiffany Jones created a FLSNY database of media sources for the rural counties in Western New York.  FLSNY sponsors dozens of trainings each year regarding pesticides, domestic violence, human trafficking and general issues regarding farm workers.  This database will be used to promote FLSNY's trainings and insure wide-spread publication of FLSNY events.

Updating FLSNY webpages:  Javier Alvarado was tasked with the project of examining FLSNY's webpages to determine a more useful and attractive design.  He produced a sample website which will be used as a model for future web development.

Documentary:  Vincente Gonzalez & Jonathan Pomboza extensively interviewed Jim Schmidt for a documentary about the food industry and the plight of farmworkers.  Below you will find the "trailer" for the film.  It is expected that the full-length documentary will be showcased at Cornell in the fall semester of 2009/