Poder Popular para la Salud del Pueblo
The purpose of Poder Popular para la Salud del Pueblo (which roughly translates to: People’s Power for the Health of the Community) is to improve the health and well-being of farm workers, their families and the communities where they live.
The program was originally developed as a project of the Agricultural Workers Health Initiative of The California Endowment (TCE). Through funding of specific research into health disparities in California, TCE recognized the serious and unique health problems facing the farm worker population in this state.
The Salinas Valley in the County of Monterey, together with Tulare County, was selected by TCE to be the primary focus areas within California for this new initiative. TCE also selected several other communities as part of the initiative in other parts of the state, with a more narrowed focus in those areas of the development of Promotores de Salud, health education workers that were to be trained in basic disease prevention practices that they would then share with others in their community.
Poder Popular was envisioned as a movement toward supporting social change and community empowerment rather than just access to services, with a strong emphasis on developing strategic alliances between farm workers and those who had influence over the allocation of resources. The work was to be focused on the development of farm worker leadership and the identification and realignment of existing resources, as well as bringing new resources into the Poder Popular communities.
Locally, Poder Popular was launched in Monterey County in September of 2005, in the communities of Greenfield, Gonzales and the eastern area of the City of Salinas. Coordination of the project by the Community Foundation for Monterey County began in May of 2006.
Since that time the program has developed a strong group of committed volunteers in all three cities from amongst the farm worker population, as well as allies in various sectors of the community including education, government, health care providers, non-profits, faith-based institutions and business, including agri-business. Together these volunteers have developed health action plans for their communities, documents which identify short, medium and long term goals to improve community health and well-being as well as lay out processes by which to achieve these ends.
Significant successes have been achieved since the inception of the program, including the development of strong resident leadership, strong relationships between residents and those in positions of authority within the community and more active civic participation in all aspects of decision making at a local level in the three Poder Popular communities. Details of these successes and other information about Poder Popular are available in the documents found on this site.
Coordination of Poder Popular moved to the Center fo Community Advocay on April 1, 2010.
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