Located in:
- Program-Specific Requirements for Wagner-Peyser Program (Employment Services)
All Program-Specific Requirements provided for the WIOA core programs in this section must be addressed for either a Unified or Combined State Plan.
- e. Agricultural Outreach Plan (AOP). Each State agency must develop an AOP every four years as part of the Unified or Combined State Plan required under sections 102 or 103 of WIOA. The AOP must include an assessment of need. An assessment need describes the unique needs of farmworkers in the area based on past and projected agricultural and farmworker activity in the State. Such needs may include but are not limited to: employment, training, and housing.
- 4. Outreach Activities
The local offices outreach activities must be designed to meet the needs of MSFWs in the State and to locate and contact MSFWs who are not being reached through normal intake activities. Describe the State agency's proposed strategies for:
- 4. Outreach Activities
- e. Agricultural Outreach Plan (AOP). Each State agency must develop an AOP every four years as part of the Unified or Combined State Plan required under sections 102 or 103 of WIOA. The AOP must include an assessment of need. An assessment need describes the unique needs of farmworkers in the area based on past and projected agricultural and farmworker activity in the State. Such needs may include but are not limited to: employment, training, and housing.
e. 4. E. Coordinating outreach efforts with NFJP grantees as well as with public and private community service agencies and MSFW groups
Current Narrative:
With a cooperative agreement with the Community Council of Idaho (CCI- Idaho’s Sec. 167 grantee) and other partner agencies, the Idaho Department of Labor serves as the lead organization in coordinating outreach efforts at both the state and local levels. All partners are dedicated to increasing MSFW customers’ awareness and access to education, training and other services. CCI, as Idaho’s NFJP grantee, is not a subrecipient conducting outreach, but rather actively collaborates in the effort.
At a minimum, the following collaborative activities will occur during the upcoming agricultural seasons:
- The memorandum of understanding/cooperative agreements for coordination of services between the Idaho Department of Labor and the Community Council of Idaho is in the process of being reviewed and renewed.
- Ongoing, mutual participation in staff training and ongoing communications to improve MSFW access to community services, particularly workforce services through the One Stop system
- Partners are collaborating on developing and sharing outreach materials among all entities
- Coordination of community information and staffing efforts at the local level to enhance outreach
- The administrative entities have reached data sharing agreements, facilitating reporting and data analysis which improves partnership and service delivery, along with opportunity assessment and process enhancement to streamline co-enrollment
To leverage resources, staff coordinate outreach activities with local partner organizations, targeting large events to contact a greater number of farmworkers. The State Monitor Advocate and outreach workers continue to make use of appropriate media, especially public service announcements using the multitude of radio stations throughout the state with Spanish programming.
Program service information is presented verbally and/or in writing in both English and Spanish. In many instances, these efforts are coordinated with other agencies, such as Idaho Legal Aid, the Community Council of Idaho, and others in order to provide MSFWs with a comprehensive look at the services available to them.
In order to protect Idaho’s agricultural labor force from exposure to the COVID virus, the state Monitor Advocate coordinated efforts with St. Luke’s Hospital allowed for the distribution of guidance, posters and other information to agricultural employers and workers across the state. Various health providers in the state aided these efforts by creating awareness and by volunteering during immunization clinics that were organized specifically for Idaho farmworkers. Outreach workers in the areas where these events took place where made aware of these events so they could relay the information to the MSFWs they came across.
In addition, during PY2020, the Monitor Advocate donated more than 400 protective masks and received a donation of more than 3,000 masks that were distributed to farmworkers across the state during the pandemic. This effort also included the creation and maintenance of a Facebook page to reach out to monolingual, Spanish speakers farmworkers with the purpose of providing reliable information on verified resources Trabajadores Agrícolas de Idaho | Facebook