Founded in 1992 in Durham, North Carolina, Student Action with Farmworkers (SAF) is a non-profit organization whose mission is to bring students and farmworkers together to learn about each other's lives, share resources and skills, improve conditions for farmworkers, and build diverse coalitions working for social change. The SAF records comprise: correspondence; meeting agendas; student projects; reports, articles, and other publications; event files; teaching materials; photos; scrapbooks; ephemera; and other documentation of SAF's programs. Materials relate more widely to immigrant and migrant worker issues, service learning, labor organizing, and protests and boycotts across the U.S.
The largest series (63 boxes, approximately 200 gigabytes) contains hundreds of individual SAF student projects directed by college-age students and interns as well as farmworker and migrant youths. Materials also include administrative files, many of which house intern applications. Project files typically contain recorded interviews, often with transcripts; essays; notebooks; artwork; poetry; audio and video recordings; theater materials; and photographs in analaog and digital formats. Some photograph albums and collages are also found here. Most of the projects took place in North Carolina but also in South Carolina. Umbrella programs include Into the Fields (ITF), Levante, and From the Ground Up (FTGU). Major themes involve worker education, housing, health, and pesticide safety; leadership development; and grassroots theater as a tool for teaching and activism. Materials are in English and Spanish. Many other materials on SAF projects are found in the Administrative Series.
The large Administrative Files Series contains organizational records created or compiled by SAF staff and are organized in subseries for SAF projects, fundraising, general administrative files, organizations, resource files (articles, fliers, and other publications), and photographs and scrapbooks.
The Printed Material Series contains Student Action with Farmworkers publications, SAF press coverage, student papers and theses, some children's books, and farmworker-related reports, articles, newsletters, data sheets, resource directories, and alerts from around the world.
The Joan Preiss Papers Series contains records related to an activist and long-time collaborator of SAF. Comprises a variety of printed materials, primarily articles and newsletters, as well as correspondence, protest ephemera, promotional material for unions and activist organizations, meeting notes, student papers, and photographs. The materials relate to migrants and farmworkers both in North Carolina and throughout the United States.
Finally, the Ephemera and Artifacts Series contains items such as posters, t-shirts, stickers, and buttons related to Burger King, Subway, Gallo, and Mt. Olive boycotts and protests. Some materials relate to protests and boycotts in other regions such as Florida and Western states. Also contains SAF publicity ephemera, and props and other materials from the Levante activist theater group.
Adapted from Student Action with Farmworkers website: http://saf-unite.org/
Founded in 1992, Student Action with Farmworkers is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization whose mission is to bring students and farmworkers together to learn about each other's lives, share resources and skills, improve conditions for farmworkers, and build diverse coalitions working for social change. SAF accomplishes its mission by working with farmworkers to address their concerns through documentation of human rights violations, grassroots education and mobilization, leadership development of young people, policy advocacy, and support of labor organizing.
Student Action with Farmworkers (SAF) traces its history to the 1970s when child psychiatrist Dr. Robert Coles and professor Bruce Payne led twelve Duke University students in a summer-long Migrant Project, investigating conditions in NC migrant camps, testifying before the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and successfully lobbying for the creation of NC Farmworker Legal Services. In the early 1980s, Payne and other faculty and students at Duke founded the Interns in Conscience project of the Hart Leadership Program, and groups of students went to southern Florida during summer breaks to work with agencies serving farmworkers.
In 1990, a grant from the U.S. Department of Education to the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke funded college student volunteers documenting the lives of migrant farmworker children. Fourteen Duke students in the summer of 1990 and eleven more in 1991 participated in the Center's Migrant Summer Program along with several University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill students. In 1992, students from Duke and UNC participated in a joint service-learning class about farmworker issues and the summer internship program.
Inspired by other activists, a group of students enlisted farmworker advocates, farmworkers, and community members to incorporate SAF as a nonprofit in 1992. Since 1992, SAF has directly impacted thousands of farmworkers, students and community members.
As of 2007, the goals of SAF include:
- To provide farmworkers and their families with greater access to existing resources through collaborations with farmworker advocacy organizations and community groups
- To link student groups working with farmworkers in order to share their experiences and ideas
- To increase the involvement of farmworkers in leadership and decision-making roles within SAF and to encourage such involvement within other organizations working on farmworker issues
- To create a supportive environment for the efforts of farmworkers to improve their status in our society
- To create internships and other projects that are mutually beneficially for students and farmworkers
- To encourage student commitment to justice and social action
- To increase interaction, communication and understanding among people of different backgrounds
- To provide students from farmworker families with educational and career opportunities
- To provide information on farmworker issues for students, faculty, religious organizations, advocacy organizations, and community groups
Processed by Jill Katte, John Mayrose, June 2007
Encoded by Jill Katte, John Mayrose, June 2007
Updated by Meghan Lyon, February 2009; March 2011
Updated by Jen Snow and Patrick Stawski, November 2011
Updated by Clare Callahan and Patrick Stawski, May 2013
Updated by Paul Sommerfeld, October 2016
Updated and partially reprocessed by Edward Coles, Paula Jeannet, and Alanna Styer, January 2019.
Web content described by Michelle Runyon, May 2020.
Updated by [Matthew] Farrell, November 2022.
Accession(s) represented in this collection guide: 2007-0071, 2009-0068, 2010-0214, 2011-0042, 2013-0079, 2016-0278, 2018-0055, 2022-0164.
