A r c h i v e d  I n f o r m a t i o n

The new initiative is called Agriculture+Industry+Migrant Families=AIM For Success in Schools and Communities. AIM for Success seeks to improve migrant families' access to education and enhance their children's opportunities for achieving high academic standards. The department is encouraging and supporting the initiative by providing linkages to federal resources.

For example, the department has provided AIM pilot sites with contact lists for volunteer coordinators in their states and for child care state block grant administrators, and has helped identify colleges and universities that are allowing tutoring and mentoring projects to fulfill students' work study requirements.

AIM for Success is a collaborative effort with the department's Office of Migrant Education, states in the Consortium Arrangement for Identification and Recruitment (CAIR), and four of the nation's top producers of meat and vegetable products. The AIM partners will develop activities at pilot sites with migrant program directors in Arkansas, Kansas, Nebraska, New York and Pennsylvania that focus on activities to enhance education for migrant families employed by the business partners.

Initial efforts will focus on ways migrant families can link with back to school activities that strengthen the connection of migrant families with educational improvement. The collaboration will continue throughout the year as partners work together to enhance educational success among migrant children and their families.

"This collaboration to promote lifelong learning for migrant workers and their families will benefit not only the families, but the businesses that employ them and the communities in which they live," said Riley. "This effort has the potential to improve educational opportunities for thousands of migrant families."

The four businesses participating are: Tyson Foods, poultry production and processing; IBP, inc., beef and pork production and processing; Seneca Foods, fruit and vegetable harvest and processing; and Curtice Burns Foods, vegetable harvest and processing.

The corporations already have participated in activities with migrant families whose first language is Spanish, Vietnamese, Laotian and English. Examples of businesses' participation include:

• IBP, inc.'s collaboration with South Sioux City Public Schools in Nebraska to produce and distribute videotapes on helping children with homework and how to use the library. Videos were aired on local cable access channels and available for migrant families, and plans call for videos on cultural awareness, self respect, gang prevention, and parent burn out; and

• Tyson Foods has provided English as a Second Language tutors, established mentoring programs, and worked with schools to provide opportunities for teachers and parents to connect.

"The relationship between our company and local educators has become increasingly important as we work together to help our plant communities, our employees, and their families," said, Ken Kimbro, vice president of Human Resources for IBP, inc. "It is our hope that the AIM initiative will serve to complement those efforts."

Tyson Foods Manager for Human Resources Barbara Berry added: "It is in the best interest of Tyson Foods to develop the skills of our workers and to support their efforts to be involved in the education of their children. Our partnership with migrant education has benefitted us as an employer, the families of our workers and the communities in which they live. We look forward to being able to extend these pilots to all of the communities served by our company."

AIM for Success will seek to enhance education for migrant families who follow the harvest and families who work in community based meat production facilities. In August, the initiative plans to have in place a minimum of six rural sites, where they will work to improve the chances for the children of the migrant workforce to succeed in school.

Ultimately, AIM partners hope to use these sites as models for other ventures throughout the year in communities where corporate partners in agriculture and industry employ migrant workers.

-###-