| SPECIAL REPORT: Faces of Katrina |
September 14, 2005
Fern workers sew cases to help Gulf Coast victims
By MARIA HERRERA
Staff Writer
SEVILLE — A life of hardships crossing borders and cutting fern doesn´t keep Maria Ramirez from dreaming big.
She imagines the small room that serves as a makeshift workshop in a modest Seville home turned into a cooperative factory.
“I´d like to see rows of sewing machines,” said Ramirez playfully. “I´d like to see people making things that would go to help children.
“I´d like to help my family, and for my sister not to have to cut fern anymore.”
Ramirez, 45, along with her sister Adela, 22, and Ana Bolanos, director of the Alianza de Mujeres Activas (Alliance of Active Women), are responsible for sewing one hundred zippered nylon cases that will be packed with hygiene products and school supplies to be distributed among those displaced by Hurricane Katrina.
The zippered cases are the result of collaboration between the alliance, a women´s advocacy group that addresses the domestic and economic hardships of Northwest Volusia fernery workers, and Hope´s Journey, a Deltona-based organization that distributes free school supplies for children worldwide.
In the wake of Katrina´s destruction, Hope´s Journey director Cary Ragsdale began looking for ways to help victims. While bigger organizations could take care of rescue and survival operations, he decided do what he knows best: supplying hygiene products and school supplies.
Hope´s Journey, formerly called School Supplies for Afghanistan, has shipped more than 3,200 pounds of school supplies to Afghanistan since its creation in 2002. The group also has assisted children from Central Florida, Ecuador, and Lithuania, and plans are in the works to aid an orphanage in India helping children affected by last year´s tsunami.
Ragsdale noted that most of the hurricane victims were economically disadvantaged.
“Part of the underlying purpose of Hope´s Journey is to address economic disadvantages where we can,” he said. “The additional cost of having to replace school supplies for their children is going to be a substantial burden.”
Bolanos knows about the burden, although she said she could only imagine what people in places like New Orleans might be going through.
She spearheaded the creation of the alliance four years ago when she worked as a volunteer for the Farmworkers Association. There and at the fern fields where she worked, she realized the need to have programs geared to help women, who make up the majority of fern cutters.
Since then, Bolanos has collaborated with groups like the Rural Woman Health Project, where she helped produce a photo-essay about the realities of women who work the fields.
Bolanos said she met Ragsdale during relief efforts for the migrant worker community following the string of hurricanes that battered Volusia County last year.
The Hispanic Association of Volusia helped the migrant worker community with food and clothes, Bolanos said.
“There was no work around here and people were hungry. They helped us out a lot.
“Now it´s time to give back.”
Although Ragsdale mobilized to get the sewing machines and the first batch of materials for the zippered cases, he hopes this is just the spark the Ramirez sisters and Bolanos need to create their own business, the freshly dubbed Creaciones Latinas (Latin Creations).
Ragsdale ordered 400 additional cases and bags of different sizes, some of which he wants the women to sell at a Jazz for Peace concert to benefit Hurricane Katrina victims on Sept. 24.
He said he eventually would like to come to Creaciones Latinas as a client. For now, he is providing them with a lawyer to trademark their name, a Web page, and all the Internet support services they need to run their business.
The Ramirez sisters and Bolanos looked at each other with optimism.
“We´re not going to get all of the women off the fields because that´s impossible. But it will be another way to support ourselves and be able to help others,” Bolanos said.
“It won´t get me out of the fields yet,” said Adela Ramirez as she held her 7-month-old baby. “But it´s definitely a start.”
Maria Ramirez said she had faith they would get more work of this kind.
“I can´t explain what you feel when you make something for someone who really needs it,” she said.
DID YOU KNOW?
Notable Hispanic women include activists, authors and government officials:
· Dolores Huerta was born in 1930 and raised in the farmworker community of Stockton, Calif. She was a co-founder -- along with Cesar Chavez -- of the United Farm Workers and is known for her role in the boycotting of the grape growing industry, which resulted in better working conditions and wages for farmworkers.
· Author Sandra Cisneros, born in 1954, writes about Mexican and Mexican-American women who rise above poverty to seek better lives. Her books include the bestseller “The House on Mango Street” and “Caramelo.” Cisneros is the recipient of several awards, including the American Book Award.
· Aida Alvarez, who grew up in Brooklyn, N.Y., became the first Hispanic woman to hold a Cabinet-level post when President Bill Clinton tapped her in 1996 to head the Small Business Administration.
Compiled by News Researcher Karen Duffy. SOURCES: www.ufw.org, www.gale.com, www.randomhouse.com
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