SHINE GLOBAL TO HOST FUNDRAISER FOR " THE HARVEST/LA COSECHA"

Montclair residents and Academy Award nominees Susan MacLaury and Albie Hecht, co-founders of Shine Global, will host the benefit to raise funds for the release of Shine Global’s newest documentary, “The Harvest/La Cosecha,” which profiles the journey of three children employed as migrant farm-workers during the 2009 harvest season.

There are currently an estimated 400,000 children who work long hours without the protection of child labor laws to feed America. “The Harvest/La Cosecha,” tells the stories of Zulema, Victor and Perla, three children who travel across the nation looking for work in the fields. Leaving behind their school, friends, and homes to seek
grueling and dangerous farm-work picking produce for a few dollars a day, their daily existence is focused on the survival of their families.

Under current United States child labor laws, children 12 years of age and older are allowed to work in the fields without the same restrictions that protect children in every other industry. According to the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) the minimum age for
particularly hazardous work in agriculture is currently 16, which is two years younger than it is in other sectors.

“The Harvest” won a work-in-progress award at the 2009 Hamptons International Film Festival and has screened at the 2010 International Documentary Film Association Festival in Amsterdam (IDFA), the 2011 Guadalajara International Film Festival, the Thessaloniki Documentary Film Festival in Greece and it has just been accepeted at the Full Frame Film Festival in Durham, N.C.   In 2009, U.S. Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis screened “The Harvest” trailer for members of the Department of Labor and hosted a panel featuring the film’s Director and child labor experts.

“Every time you eat a salad, every time you eat a vegetable, you have to think that this might have been picked by a child,” said Executive Producer Eva Longoria. “The children who feed the most well-fed nation in the world, go to bed hungry,” added the star of ABC television’s hit show “Desperate Housewives.”

“Our newest film, “The Harvest,” tackles a complex and heartbreaking issue,” said Shine Global Executive Director Susan MacLaury.  “The film raises many tough questions and does not offer easy solutions. Our goal is to begin a conversation that leads our country towards enacting legislation such as the CARE Act, which aims to create a mandatory minimum age for child agricultural workers.”

“I had always believed that the minimum wage covered all workers in the United States and didn’t realize that there were farm worker exemptions,” said “The Harvest” Executive Producer Albie Hecht. “The average farm worker family earns less than $17,500 a year. The children in this film work so hard, their childhoods cut short by the need to provide for their families.”