Quick Take
A monthly donation drive in Watsonville gives farmworker families access to food, clothing, diapers, toys and Halloween costumes as they navigate rising housing costs and other economic hardships. Volunteers say the effort is about more than material goods: It's also a way to show families that their community cares.
➤ Para leer el artĂculo en español, haga clic aquĂ.
Inside the Watsonville Woman’s Club on a Friday afternoon, a young girl flaps her furry, pink-and-white flamingo wings as she beams into a mirror.
Finally, she’s found the right Halloween costume. It took a handful of wardrobe changes: Some were too big; others were too small. Now, she can’t stop smiling as the flamingo head on her hood flops around.
She runs off to find her parents in a sea of people pushing carts filled with food, diapers, baby wipes, clothes, blankets, toys and costumes.
On the second Friday of every month, the Center for Farmworker Families hosts a distribution drive in Watsonville where local farmworkers and their families can pick up donated items. This month, about 200 farmworkers line up outside the women’s club.
“Folks living and working in agricultural communities are often faced with very significant economic hardships,” said Katie Gabriel-Cox, who is on the Center for Farmworker Families’ board. “By providing these items, we hope to alleviate some of the immediate economic hardships and challenges folks face on a monthly basis.”
A new law in California will raise the farmworkers’ minimum wage to about $19.75 per hour. But residents need to earn about $81.04 an hour to afford a two-bedroom rental in the Santa Cruz and Watsonville areas, according to a 2026 study by the National Low Income Housing Coalition.
Brenda Eskenazi, a UC Berkeley professor of public health, said farmworkers face a range of social challenges. She’s conducted several studies about the health of Hispanic farmworkers and their families along the Central Coast.
“Farmworkers don’t have many rights and they don’t have much money. And many of them are food-insecure, which is ironic,” she said.
A strawberry farmworker, who asked to remain anonymous, volunteered at the drive which she previously hosted at her home. After working in the fields for more than 30 years, she said volunteering is a way to help the community.
“It is important because as people who work in agriculture, they don’t give us enough to pay rent, food, bills, and clothing for our family,” she said in Spanish.
Farmworker housing has long been an issue in the Bay Area. In 2023, a farmworker killed seven people at a mushroom farm in Half Moon Bay. The mass shooting brought attention to substandard housing conditions, including reports of farmworkers living in sheds and shipping containers. The shooting prompted some officials to push for more farmworker housing. Three years later, officials in Half Moon Bay face increasing pressure to approve an affordable housing development for farmworkers.
Over the past 30 years, Eskenazi said housing prices have surged along the Central Coast, where many farmworkers live and work.
“We’re talking about a big social issue where some of the most expensive land is where the farmworkers are farming,” she said.
That’s top of mind for the strawberry farmworker.
“Rent is very expensive. For one family to pay three or four thousand for a home is very difficult,” she said.
Another berry worker, who also asked to remain anonymous, gathered rice, beans, vegetables, shoes and clothing at the drive. She’s attended the event for the past two years, since moving to Watsonville.
“They help me a lot because they give me soap, shampoo, they give me lots of things, and they clothe me and lots of the clothing is new with tags,” she said in Spanish.
Some princess costumes catch her eye. She holds up two options to a volunteer: one more pink and the other more purple, both sparkly. She asks which dress would be better for her daughter.
After some back and forth, she puts the purple one in her cart.
Jacqueline Cisneros, 45, drove more than an hour from her home in San Jose to volunteer at the event.
Cisneros said she started volunteering in August after hearing a deacon at her church, Santa Teresa Catholic Church, describe his work with farmworker families.
“We live in a Bay Area bubble where wealth continues to accumulate at the top while those who are already struggling continue to fall further behind,” she said. With all the access to education and financial resources, she wants to “share some of that knowledge and resources with other people who don’t have the same privileges that we do.”
Another volunteer Eric Chuang, 62, hands out packs of diapers and wipes as people walk through the line. It’s the first stop of the drive after farmworkers pass through the entrance, which is lined with racks of costumes.
Chuang is a volunteer with the nonprofit Tzu Chi, a Buddhist international aid foundation founded in Taiwan with a chapter in San Jose. He said Tzu Chi first started supporting Watsonville locals in 2023, after the Pajaro River floods, when many peoples’ homes were destroyed and they were forced to evacuate. The organization provided disaster relief by sending Visa gift cards to residents.
“We are all part of the human beings living in the world. So today I’m lucky I could be self-sustained but not everybody is like that,” he said.
At the end of the drive, Cisneros sweeps the floor. She wants to show farmworker families that “they are seen. We see them and we are here to support them.”
Community members can visit the Center for Farmworker Families’ website to donate gently used items.
Have something to say? Lookout welcomes letters to the editor, within our policies, from readers. Guidelines here.
