Our History
Prehistory: Juliana Mateo...
The story of the Juliana Mateo Foundation for Disabled Farmworkers begins with the story of Juliana Mateo.
Juliana was born in Guatemala on July 31, 1978. She was caught in a horrible accident at an early age that severely burned her face and right arm, leaving her arm and hand permanently disabled. In spite of her disability, when Juliana was forced at the age of fourteen to flee Guatemala with her mother to the US (her father had been gunned down by guerrillas many years earlier), she went to work to support her family, laboring under extremely harsh conditions as a farmworker in Homestead, FL.
While in Homestead, Juliana learned to speak Spanish (in Guatemala she spoke only a native dialect) and began raising a family, giving birth to two sons, Jose and Selmo, and a daughter, Fabiola. Things were not easy for her there, but she was able to get by.
However, in 2005, Juliana became very ill. She was taken to a West Palm Beach hospital whose doctors failed to identify the extent of her sickness, although being in a private hospital gave her a feeling of security. They informed her that she had an infection in a kidney, but they did not explain to her in detail what that meant.
Juliana returned to her normal life in the fields of Homestead until her illness took a turn for the worse in June of 2006. That is when she visited a clinic and was informed that she was in urgent need of treatment. Juliana moved to Manatee County to be with her mother and checked herself into Manatee Memorial Hospital on June 29, 2006. The doctors there diagnosed her with:
1. Chronic renal failure
2. End-stage renal disease
3. Anemia
4. High blood pressure
5. Thrombocytopenia
6. Myeloproliferative disorder
She was forced to stay in the hospital for three months, receiving dialysis three times a week.
Juliana could not survive long enough to arrange for a kidney transplant without three weekly dialysis treatments. However, Manatee Memorial Hospital refused to treat her after September 21, 2006.
In response to Juliana’s dire situation, concerned Palmetto residents came together to assist Juliana in her search for treatment by establishing a fund for her needs under the name of the Juliana Mateo Foundation.
Volunteers were able to find Juliana a clinic that would provide her with the three weekly dialysis treatments necessary for her to stay alive. That clinic is located an hour away from her home, so volunteers came together to make sure that she would always have transportation to and from her treatments. Juliana’s medications were expensive, but the costs were easily offset by the donations raised through the Foundation.
By July of 2007 it became clear that the funds initially raised would only be enough to continue with Juliana’s treatment plan for another year or two before she would once again face the dire situation she faced in September of 2006. More money would have to be raised.
A new organization is born...
But when a group of volunteers came together with Juliana to discuss the future fundraising efforts that would be necessary to secure her continued care in the absence of a clear path to a kidney transplant, Juliana expressed a hope that future fundraising might function not only to secure her needs, but also the needs of other disabled farmworkers with nowhere else to turn. The volunteers agreed, and in July of 2007 the Juliana Mateo Foundation, a private fund set up exclusively for Juliana, gave rise to a new non-profit organization, the Juliana Mateo Foundation for Disabled Farmworkers, Inc., with the mission of assisting disabled farmworkers like Juliana who are in need and do not know where to turn for help.
Where are we starting, and where do we hope to go?
The final vision for an organization that carries out our mission to its end would have to be something like a national fund and affiliated services capable of assisting every disabled farmworker in the United States. One would hope that the underlying political and economic conditions that thrust disabled farmworkers into such dire circumstances would be relieved long before such a massive organization could ever come into existence. However, for people like Juliana, there simply isn’t time to wait for political and economic trends to change. If not for the support of donors and volunteers she would almost certainly be dead and her children would be without a mother. So even though the Juliana Mateo Foundation for Disabled Farmworkers has been forced to start humbly, it has in no way been forced to start insignificantly, for the importance of the Foundation’s work in the lives of the individuals that we are able to assist can be incalculably great, as Juliana knows firsthand.
Our initial vision is to develop assistance services where we began with Juliana, in the Sarasota-Manatee-Hillsborough region, as a model for the development of similar services in other areas. Perhaps what would ultimately be needed to pursue our mission to its end would be a Florida Disabled Farmworker Fund or a National Disabled Farmworker Fund, but right now it is important to develop effective and sustainable local operations so that a refined model can be put in place for use in the future development of services for other areas.
Therefore, our current goal is to grow to the point that we can provide assistance services to disabled farmworkers in need within the Sarasota-Manatee-Hillsborough region, with Bradenton-Palmetto being the center of our operations. Once a sustainable local operation is in place, we intend to duplicate our services, first throughout the state of Florida, and then in other states with large populations of farmworkers.
We are currently in a pre-launch phase as we lay the organizational groundwork that will enable the Juliana Mateo Foundation to thrive, providing an enduring resource for America's disabled farmworkers. Please help us attain our pre-launch fundraising goal of $100,000 by December 1, 2008 to ensure that we are able to operate at full speed by our planned 'Grand Opening' in February of 2009. Click here to Donate Now!
