This past Holiday Season has been one of blessing for so many people in the migrant farmworker community thanks to the compassion, kindness, and charity of so many in our community. The Warwick Area Farmworkers Organization has put together a video below summarizing some of those individuals, organizations, and volunteers who worked so tirelessly to make sure those who would otherwise go without had a Merry Christmas this year. Please watch the video below to learn more.

https://magis.to/av/Lz8tB1JEHgEzISkBDmEwCXt_?l=vsm&o=w&c=e

Thank you again to:

• The St. Peter’s Lutheran Church for hosting our Christmas Store this year.
• The Kurdyla Family for their donation of 220 lbs. of Masa Harina for the Food Pantry.
• The Town of Warwick Police Department for their help delivering presents.
• The Warwick Valley Knights of Columbus for their donation of Christmas gifts.
• The Orthmann Family for their annual donation of 100 Santa Express Delivery gift bags.
• Claire Gabelman and Fran Gallardo for helping families by making crafts and cookies.
• The 30 volunteers who wish to remain anonymous that helped out all Holiday Season where we needed them to.
• The Town of Vernon Police Department for sending Secret Santa Agent Felix to help us out and visit with the kids.
• The Vanderkruik Family for their donation of a Christmas tree.
• The Vernon Women’s Group for volunteering at the Christmas Store.
• The Warwick Valley Central School District students and teachers who donated gifts to the Christmas Store.
• Garnett Medical Center who donated 12 Christmas baskets for families in need.
• All the families and people who donated money, gifts, and time to our various events this Holiday Season.

Because of your work 120 families consisting of 300 individual people who receive services from the WAFO were able to have a joyful Christmas and wonderful Holiday Season. We appreciate all you have done and cannot thank you on their behalf enough for your incredible work!

We are now working on raising funds for 2023 to make our Winter and Spring programs happen for these same families. It takes a considerable amount of funding to make all our programs happen for a full year even though we make sure every cent goes directly towards the people receiving services in our programs. We are now looking for donors to help support these programs for this 2023 year and to make sure that the lives of migrant farmworkers and their families are enriched, healthy, well educated, and become capable of sustaining themselves economically. Our programs are a hand up, not a hand out. We need your help to make this happen.

You can provide monthly support of our programs by donating here. This allows you to break your donation out into monthly amounts that meet your budget and add up to steady income to support our programs throughout the year.

You can also donate to sponsor a student for our WAFO “Dulce Esperanza” (Sweet Hope) Summer Enrichment Program. This will allow one child to attend the summer program.

We also have opportunities for one time donations in small to large amounts that can be made here.

Our full year of programming requires $30,000 year to run, but with inflation this number will unfortunately creep to a higher amount this year so every dollar donated counts to making our total fundraising goal for the year to happen. No donation is too small or big. Every single one counts and goes directly to the people in our programs.

As we move into 2023, we will continue to highlight some of these programs. Our Facebook and Instagram accounts are a wonderful way to see your donations in action. Be sure to like and subscribe to them so you can stay up to date on what is going on almost daily.

Thank you for your continued support and generosity– here’s to a wonderful 2023!