VOLUNTEER
Volunteer Today
Open Daily 7 days/week
Volunteers are needed daytimes and evenings, whether for a day, an hour, a week, a summer, or anytime. Call EFWA today at (631) 286-8004.
On-The-Job Training
No Experience Necessary
We use “on-the-job” training, so anyone can learn while taking action and making a difference. No prior experience or special skills are needed. Volunteers are productive from their first day in!
Make a Difference
Dare to Care
Participation is open to all those who dare to care and invest the time. Poverty wages force working families to “choose” between putting food on the table, paying rent and utility bills. Your participation can make a difference for workers organizing to end poverty conditions.
Sign up for an Orientation and Activity
New volunteers attend an orientation to inform them of basic history of the association, how it works, what its goals are and ways that are available for them to participate. After the orientation, new volunteers join an activity, learning the practical skills of organizing while helping to advance the association’s efforts. Contact EFWA’s Volunteers Coordinator to sign up for the next activity.
Organizer Training Programs Available
Find out about EFWA’s volunteer organizer training programs. We teach the organizing method and lessons that have created the most successful movement in this country for lasting change and advancement by and for farm and service workers, as well as other low-paid workers. In these troubled times, add your voice by joining EFWA to fight the government policies that cause and perpetuate poverty among the working poor.
Illustration by Alexander Klingspor
Why does the richest country in the world have farm workers without food?
Volunteer Power
Most sustainable fuel of all times
Regular Volunteer Activities
-
Food Distribution
Thursday, Saturday and Sunday
EFWA members run supplemental food distributions three times a week. We prioritize fresh, organic and healthy food items and always need volunteer drivers and other assistance.
-
Legal Advice Session
Monthly
Legal advice is provided to requesting EFWA members privately with a volunteer attorney, accompanied by a volunteer lay advocate to assist with the next steps of the attorney’s advice. Lay advocates help on cases ranging from stolen wages to evictions. Advocates and volunteer attorneys are always needed.
-
General Medical Session
Monthly
Volunteer medical professionals conduct general medical sessions that provide preventive care to EFWA members lacking access, and offer vaccination sessions as available. Lay advocates assist members and the doctors with follow-up, organize donated lab work and learn how to coordinate the medical sessions. Volunteer doctors and other medical professionals are always urgently needed.
-
Benefit Advocacy
Mondays & Fridays 9:30 am - 12:00 noon
Farm workers, service workers, domestic workers and other low-paid workers can’t win without organization. EFWA teaches the skill of advocacy. You can learn how to fight to keep a member’s lights on, how to restore and prevent utility shutoffs, how to expunge medical debt, and fight benefit denials for elderly, blind or disabled members.
-
Operation Camp Crew
Sundays 11 am - 5 pm
Volunteers and EFWA members reach migrant workers living on farm labor camps to bring the benefit of organization, community connection and material aid, such as food, clothing, sun protection and cooling supplies.
-
Membership Canvass
Saturdays 9:30 am - 4:30 pm
Alone and isolated we cannot achieve anything; united we can win! Volunteers canvass door to door in low-income neighborhoods where members and potential members live, to build organization where it’s needed the most.
-
Publications Session
Wednesday 2 - 5 pm
Join EFWA's publication staff! You can learn – or help teach – how to produce the next issue of EFWA's newspaper, The Long Island Farm Worker, and our seasonal Sponsors Guide to tell the truth about low-income workers organizing for economic justice. We also need volunteers to design flyers. Call EFWA!
-
Community Outreach
Fridays and Sundays
Volunteers set up information tables in front of grocery stores, local community events and other locations to promote EFWA so that others can join our cause. This is one way EFWA enlists new friends and participants to come in and make a difference. Please call if you can volunteer or if you know of a location where EFWA can set up an information table.
-
Mailout Sessions
Daily
Volunteers prepare and send letters about our current campaigns to people who have joined EFWA and have expressed an interest in volunteering or supporting EFWA. We need volunteers to help with the daily letter mailouts as well as to assist with the bulk mailing of EFWA’s membership newspaper and Sponsors Guide.
-
Phoning Session
Daily 6 - 9 pm
Volunteers are essential to all of EFWA’s activities year-round. Volunteers conduct group telephone sessions to re-contact interested individuals met on community outreach and by word-of-mouth about participating with EFWA’s organizing activities scheduled each week.
Annual Campaigns and Events
Winter Survival Campaign
Farm Worker Summer Campaign
Back-to-School Campaign
Halloween Events
Holiday Campaign
January - March
Winter Survival Campaign
Statistically, EFWA’s budget-saving Winter Survival Campaign saves at least six lives each winter when our members mobilize to aid one another in preventing disasters, such as utility shutoffs, house fires caused by unsafe heating methods or fatalities from untreated illness, inadequate nutrition and shelter. Every year since our founding in 1972, we have been getting food out to hundreds of membership families in low-income communities and keeping members housed through individual advocacy.
How you can help:
Host a collection of food, winter coats and hygiene supplies at your religious community, group, club or classroom
Volunteer on Operation Winter Watch by visiting elderly and vulnerable members at their homes and organizing a phone tree to contact members who may have lost heat and need EFWA’s benefit program.
Volunteer on a door-to-door membership canvass to reach seasonal workers who often face utility shutoffs, hunger and unemployment during the winter season.
Learn to do utility advocacy to restore shutoff gas and electricity services that endanger the lives of low-income families.
May - September
Farm Worker Summer Campaign
EFWA’s Farm Worker Summer Campaign reaches seasonal farm workers at their homes through door-to-door membership canvasses and migrant farm workers through Operation Camp Crews to farm labor camps throughout Long Island. EFWA runs distributions at the farm labor camps of food, clothing, hygiene supplies, sun protection, bottles of water and cooling equipment like fans and swamp coolers.
How you can help:
Host a collection of work clothing, food, sun protection or cooling fans at your religious community, group, club or classroom
Volunteer on Operation Camp Crews to assist in uniting migrant farm workers and distributing requested material resources.
Learn to run EFWA’s Benefit Office to meet the expanded need for clothing and other material resources by EFWA members.
Invite EFWA speakers to your religious community, group, club or classroom to build material support for the fight for justice for farm workers.
August - September
Back-to-School Campaign
The expenses low-income working parents face for back-to-school clothes and supplies, medical exams for school entry and immunizations can break an already over-stretched budget. Our Back-to-School clothing and supply distribution can save EFWA membership families up to $500 – money that can be used to pay for rent, utilities, food and medicines these families will otherwise be forced to do without.
How you can help:
Host a collection of school supplies at your religious community, group, club or classroom
Volunteer at the annual Back-to-School distribution sorting school supplies, filling backpacks and delivering resources to EFWA members who request assistance.
Learn to fill emergency food requests from EFWA members that become even more frequent throughout the fall and winter.
Invite EFWA speakers to your religious community, group, club or classroom to build support for EFWA’s Back-to-School Campaign.
October
Halloween Events
EFWA's annual Children's Safe and Sane Halloween Party and chaperoned Trick-or-Treat for Farm Workers is the first in a series of events organized by and for low-income workers and their families through the holiday season. Join the Halloween festivities!
How you can help:
Host a Trick-or-Treat for Farm Workers in your neighborhood and introduce your neighbors to EFWA members and their children.
Assist at EFWA’s annual Halloween Party by running games for kids and serving food. You can also help decorate and setup for the event.
November - December
Holiday Campaign
EFWA volunteers have created budget-saving programs for members to help other members meet seasonal needs such as holiday food basket distributions for Thanksgiving and Christmas time, and holiday toy distributions to parents for their private family gift giving to their children.
How you can help:
Host a collection of holiday food items and new toys at your religious community, group, club or classroom
Volunteer on interviews with EFWA members requesting to enroll in EFWA’s year-round budget savings program and special holiday distributions.
Volunteer at Thanksgiving and Holiday Food Basket distributions to assist hundreds of low-income workers and their families.
Volunteer at the annual Holiday Party running games, serving food and assisting in the Secret Santa room.
Volunteer at the toy sort where EFWA volunteers prepare gifts to go to parents for their private family gift giving.