Who we are

Student/Farmworker Alliance (SFA) is a national network of students and youth organizing with farmworkers to eliminate sweatshop conditions and modern-day slavery in the fields. We work in alliance with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), a Florida-based, membership-led organization of mostly Latino, Haitian, and Mayan Indian low-wage workers. We understand our work—which formally began in 2000—as part of larger movements for economic and social justice.

In 2005, farmworkers from the CIW and their allies scored a decisive victory in the national Taco Bell Boycott. Yielding to growing nationwide pressure from the CIW, students, and other allies, Taco Bell and its parent company Yum Brands—the world’s largest restaurant corporation—conceded to all of the boycott’s demands, agreeing to work with the CIW to improve the sub-poverty wages and miserable working conditions of farmworkers in its tomato supply chain. During the Taco Bell Boycott, 25 high schools, colleges and universities removed or prevented Taco Bell restaurants and sponsorships as part of SFA’s Boot the Bell campaign.

Following the Taco bell victory and seeking to expand the victory's precedents to the entire tomato industry, the CIW also led successful campaigns resulting in “Fair Food” agreements with McDonald's, Burger King, Whole Foods and Subway. Once again, students and youth played a vital role in this string of victories that spanned 2007-2008.

SFA returned to intensive campus organizing with the launch of the Dine with Dignity campaign in March of 2009, calling on major food service providers to take responsibility for the conditions in which the produce they serve is harvested. In just 16 months, four of the nation's leading foodservice companies (Bon Appetit, Compass Group, Aramark and Sodexo) had agreed to work with the CIW.

As the “target market” of the fast food industry and as students strategically poised to hold our educational institutions accountable, young people have played an indispensable role in bringing about each of the groundbreaking “Fair Food” agreements. Our work has received national recognition including the 2005 “Campus Activism Victory of the Year” by Mother Jones Magazine and special honors from American Rights at Work, the Business Ethics Network, and the National Latino/a Law Student Association.

Through tireless organizing grounded in a program of education, action, and leadership development, we were a driving force behind eight of the largest victories against corporate greed that our generation has seen, and we're just getting started. Now we shift our gaze to the supermarket industry as we continue—alongside farmworkers—to create the path to a better world.

• Education – raising awareness about farmworkers’ struggles
  SFA organizers facilitate educational activities through which students and farmworkers have the opportunity to come together in an exchange of knowledge and experience, cultivating a critical analysis that reveals the intersections between people on opposite ends of the corporate food industry. This includes worker- and student-led workshops, speaking tours, alternative spring breaks, and internships.
  
  
• Action – uniting with worker-led campaigns
  We are committed to building a base of members whose understanding of social change and injustice in the fields leads them to act in solidarity with farmworkers and simultaneously toward a broader vision of collective liberation through supporting farmworker-led and related campaigns for better wages and working conditions and respect for fundamental human rights.
  
  
• Leadership development – building a larger movement
  In all aspects of our work, we focus heavily on developing the skills and confidence of students and youth so they can organize for social justice around a broad array of issues in their communities.