Florida Catholic | ‘Bebe, Te Amo!’ (Baby, I Love You!)

‘Bebe, Te Amo!’ (Baby, I Love You!)

New farmworker program offers care to Florida moms and babies.

TANYA GOODMAN | FLORIDA CATHOLIC ORLANDO BUREAU EDITOR

Published: 07.14.08

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To obtain assistance or to learn more about the “Baby, I love you!” program, please contact project co-coordinators Marie Miechelle Jean-Gilles or Edna Soto-Serra in Apopka, 407-886-5151, or one of the community health coordinators listed below. All the coordinators speak Spanish. Jean-Giles also speaks Creole, French and Italian, as well as English.

• Fellsmere, Maria Martinez, 772-571-0081.

• Homestead, Altagracia Lobato, 305-247-0072.

• Immokalee, Norma Castaneda, 239-657-8263.

APOPKA | The Farmworkers Association of Florida is helping assure that babies in the communities it serves get off to a healthy start in life with its new program, “Baby, I Love You!” or in Spanish, “Bebe, Te Amo!”

The program will serve farmworker families in the Fellsmere, Homestead and Immokalee areas of central and south Florida. The farmworkers association, with headquarters in Apopka, has hired and trained three former farmworker women to become “promotoras,” – or community health educators – to conduct outreach and education to women in these areas of the state.

A $50,000 grant from the March of Dimes received in March helps fund the new program.

“We are excited to be embarking on this project. The need is great and now we have the resources to fulfill this need for participating women,” said Jeannie Economos of the association.

Economos, a pesticide safety and environmental health project coordinator, said the program expands and extends the work of the Sisters/Compañeras program, whose purpose is to provide education, information, peer support and referral service to at-risk pregnant and postpartum farmworker and rural poor women in Apopka. That program helps to ensure women’s prenatal health and improve birth outcomes.

Though the grant for the new program covers the cost of salaries for part-time educators and a full-time coordinator, there are still many unmet costs.

“Offering meals and/or refreshments to women and their infants is one area in which we will need assistance,” said Marie Miechelle Jean-Gilles, co-coordinator for the program.

“In addition, during our trainings and educational classes, we offer ‘premios’ – gifts or prizes – to women in the group. These premios can include necessary things such as personal hygiene items, diapers and/or other baby items, canned goods and other nonperishable food items and toys for those who already have young children,” Jean-Gilles added.

Contributions of money and/or any of the items listed above are welcome. Economos said those contributions “can put a smile on the face of a young farmworker woman, can warm the heart of an immigrant family whose needs are many and resources few, and can help provide some basic survival supplies to families who are working hard in the fields that provide us with the daily food we eat.”

To help, call Jean-Gilles at 407-886-5151 or send a monetary contribution to the Farmworker Association of Florida, 815 S. Park Ave., Apopka, FL 32703.

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‘Bebe, Te Amo!’ (Baby, I Love You!)

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