MURRAY (Kentucky) LEDGER & TIMES

January 10, 2008

Bridging language barriers: CCHS senior creates safety plan for migrant workers

Kelsey Watson, a senior at Calloway County High School, recently completed work on a project to help bridge the language barrier that exists in the Murray-Calloway County community between American farmers and Spanish-speaking migrant workers.

Watson, who has been named the Kentucky Farm Bureau Outstanding Female by the state of Kentucky, created the program ¡Seguridad Primera!, (Safety First!), after seeing a desperate need in the community for temporary Spanish-speaking residents to better understand many of the risks they face as migrant workers.

“The project Kelsey Watson describes is extremely impressive and genuine. She is using the document to fulfill a scholarship requirement,” commented Jacob Falwell, CCHS teacher and FFA advisor. “She is the cream of the crop, a 4.0 student involved in so much, and yet, she manages to do well in everything.”

In her report, Watson said she “designed, produced and distributed farm accident prevention brochures in Spanish and English to inform both local producers and H2A program migrant workers of farm safety hazards. With this goal in mind, I recruited students involved in agriculture to help others stay safe, and together we taught our community about a lot more than just safety.”

Watson said the hot, summer months bring a large number of Spanish-speaking residents to the area and “provide reliable guest-worker labor to the agricultural industry” as well as “provide the backbone of American agriculture.”

“As this busy season passed in my community, I saw the expected flow of farm safety pamphlets, brochures, flyers, mailings, demonstrations, safety fairs and newspaper articles about farm accident prevention bombard American farmers in the area,” she said. “However, when I was driving past the acres of tobacco and endless stalks of corn, I didn't see an American farmer hoeing the rows or driving the combines; I saw Spanish-speaking H2A workers. While looking through the English farm safety materials my dad had received, I realized that the wrong group was being targeted, and that the face of American agriculture was changing. With this new influx of labor, American farmers are spending more and more time in the office: marketing their crops, pursuing business opportunities, and utilizing new technology to help run the farm more effectively. It is the H2A workers who are out in the field, in one of the most dangerous job atmospheres available, working day after day without any knowledge of the risks that they are facing.”

She said she decided to take action by creating and distributing the Spanish farm safety materials to the community's migrant workers, and to inform the farming community of the responsibility it has to protect workers, neighbors and friends.

She obtained farm safety literature in both English and Spanish and began using her proficiency in the languages to edit the literature to the most important facts. She then placed the information into a brochure in both English and Spanish and obtained funding to have them printed.

“I contacted local businesses for funding and support. Businesses donated novelty items to place in gift bags along with the farm safety literature. I felt that it was important to also send a message to these workers that our community appreciated them, and we accomplished this by giving each migrant worker a gift bag filled with pencils, pens, notepads, candy and other items. I also wrote a letter to the agricultural producers in my community explaining my goal and their role in accomplishing this mission,” she remarked.

Watson said she feels the project has helped to inform farmers of the communication breakdown that exists between them and their migrant workers.

“I feel we really helped shed some light on the issue and, hopefully, helped save lives. I also feel the migrant workers learned about farm safety and were able to really apply the information in the packet to their daily lives. I also think I made an impact in my community simply by telling people about my project. Their faces showed surprise when I told them my goal, and I feel it was the first time some had ever even thought about it.

“Most of all, I think the community learned a bigger lesson: acceptance. Although our community is comprised of different individuals with different viewpoints, I sincerely feel this project made everyone think harder about tolerance, and I hope someone else will reach out to someone different from himself as a result of this endeavor.”