Program helps farmworkers grow skills

College partners with Workforce Solutions, MET

By Diana Washington Valdez / El Paso Times

For years, Ramon De la Rosa used to stand with other farmworkers on a corner of South El Paso Street hoping agricultural contractors seeking farmhands would hire him.

"I used to stand out there at 3 a.m. or 4 a.m. with the rest of them," he said. "I started working the fields since I was 7 years old, when I helped my family with farm work. I dropped out of school later, and traveled from harvest to harvest throughout several states."

After 42 years in this line of work, the former farmworker was resigned to ending his days doing the same thing, or until he was displaced by the increasing technology in agriculture.

Today, De la Rosa, 56, is a construction instructor at El Paso Community College, the result of a partnership with the Motivation, Education and Training program and Workforce Solutions Upper Rio Grande.

Lauren Macias-Cervantes, regional relations director for the Workforce Solutions Upper Rio Grande, said De la Rosa is one of the MET partnership success stories.

Soon after De la Rosa enrolled in MET in 2001, college staffers noted he had leadership qualities and a talent for the construction trade.

"He picked up things quickly and was always willing to do anything to help the other students," said John Ballejo, director of the MET program in El Paso.

"I am very glad I made the change," De la Rosa said. "I didn't think I could ever do something like this. And to think I used to make $5,000 a year from farm work, and maybe a little more on a good year."

MET, which has been in El Paso since 1995, is helping 150 to 185 people. The private, nonprofit program also helps seasonal migrant workers in other states upgrade their job skills.

"We received funds from the U.S. Labor Department for this purpose, and we had been (taken out) of the budget for seven years, until some legislators became aware of what had happened and put us back into the budget," Ballejo said.

MET received $150,000 recently to continue its work when the new fiscal year begins July 1.

Patricia Rivera, 31, another MET alum, and her mother, worked in farm fields between 1981 and 1996. She heard about the program through a friend and enrolled.

"After participating in MET, we found a new way of living. We no longer had to work 12 ours in the heat for just minimum wage," said Rivera, who is now a loan technician at the Lower Valley Housing Corp.

Other previous MET students have become truck drivers or supervisors, or have continued their education and became college professors, Ballejo said.