Contact:
Lupe Torres-Hilario, Office Manager
Gloria Gomez and Claudia Castorena, Co-Founders
Galilee Center
760-396-9100
Email:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Mecca, CA – (December 1, 2017)
East Coachella Valley non-profit, The Galilee Center, open their doors today to migrant farmworkers in need of a safe place to sleep overnight.
Migrant housing is a huge problem in the eastern Coachella Valley. Hundreds of migrant farmworkers travel to the east Coachella Valley for harvest each season. Most do not have a place to sleep, eat or shower. Many have to bathe in irrigation ditches and stay in their cars or sleep in the dirt in the fields. For years, many farm workers sleep overnight in their cars in a local public parking lot due to the lack of available housing.
Last month, The Galilee Center received two large gifts from Mary Ingebrand-Pohlar, and Father Howard Lincoln of Sacred Heart Parish in Palm Desert, to provide temporary overnight shelter for the farm workers through the end of the harvest season, July 31, 2018. Because of their outstanding generosity, in addition to access to restrooms, showers, laundry facilities and a hot meal at the Galilee Center, the farm workers will now be able to sleep over night on mats on the floor, with clean sheets and pillows, and have breakfast provided in the morning before work.
Gloria Gomez, Galilee Center co-founder, says more farmworker housing is “greatly needed’ and the new emergency shelter is a “good start.” “We don’t want to be doing this only for one year. We want to do it for many years. So hopefully the community will get involved and help us.”
The Galilee Center is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that fulfills the needs of local underprivileged and disadvantaged families, children and farmworkers in east Coachella Valley by providing food, clothing, and other basic needs, affirming their dignity with love, compassion and respect. The Galilee Center is in its seventh year of operation by locally respected and honored founders Claudia Castorena and Gloria Gomez. For more information, please call the Galilee Center at 760-396-9100 or visit their website: www.galileecenter.org