An Immersion Experience for Rollins College Students!
A very special group of Rollins College
students in Central Florida spent their weekend in a immersion experience to
learn more about the ethnically diverse, low-income community just 10 miles
north of their college campus and to learn more about the realities for
farmworkers living and working in this community.
In the hot Florida sun, they spent
Saturday morning April 6th in the vegetable fields near Lake Apopka, pulling
weeds alongside the farmworkers who were working the land that weekend. Trying to keep pace with the workers gave the
students a taste of what it must be like to do this back-breaking work all day
everyday, instead of just for the four hours that they spent in the fields that
day.
After a brief and hurried lunch and a bit
of relief in the air-conditioned Rollins JUMP bus, the students came to the
office of the Farmworker Association of Florida to begin the Lake Apopka Toxic
Tour. The tour took them back to the
fields that they had just worked in earlier in the day, but with a new
perspective - that of the unseen dangers related to pesticide contamination and
the hazardous living and working conditions for farmworkers.
Later, along the tour, the group stopped
at Magnolia Park in Apopka, where they sat together in a circle and posed deep
and probing questions that lead to both an engaging discussion and new and
greater insights into issues of social and environmental justice.
A little tired and a bit wiser, all
returned to the FWAF office in Apopka for a few shared insights and a fun group
photo. Toxic tours are intense
experiences that leave participants with new questions and a new way of seeing
the world of farmworkers and the food that they produce for us to eat.
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