Wishnatzki honored for helping farmworker children
Published on
02/24/2010 09:06PM
PLANT CITY, Fla. — Gary Wishnatzki, one of Florida’s leading strawberry grower-shippers, is being nationally recognized for his humanitarian efforts to help migrant workers.
Wishnatzki, president of Wishnatzki Farms, was scheduled to receive the National Migrant and Seasonal Head Start Association’s yearly Plate of Bounty Award during a Feb. 25 ceremony in Washington, D.C.
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Courtesy Redlands Christian Migrant Association |
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Gary Wishnatzki (center rear), president of Wishnatzki Farms, Plant City, Fla., is joined by students from Wimauma Academy who sang at a Feb. 12 dinner he hosted as part of his Strawberry Pro-Am Tennis Tournament that raises money for education of migrant workers’ children. Wishnatzki is being nationally recognized for helping farmworker children. |
The organization, which offers child-development and social services to low-income families working in farming, lauded Wishnatzki for marshalling hundreds of thousands of dollars to fund schooling for children of migrant farmworkers.
Victor Gomez, the organization’s interim executive director, in a news release said he was amazed at Wishnatzki’s record of charitable actions toward farmworker children, which includes creating a $286,000 endowment to fund graduate-level scholarships for the children of migrant and seasonal farmworkers and organizing the yearly Strawberry Pro Am Tennis Tournament that benefits farmworker children’s education.
“He’s helping the children of farmworkers get doctorate degrees,” Gomez said in the release. “That’s remarkable. That’s a level of support that I personally haven’t seen before.”
In its fifth year, the Strawberry Pro Am Tennis tournament which this year was renamed the Publix Strawberry Pro Am tournament after the Lakeland-based Publix Super Markets Inc. contributed $10,0000, raised more than $80,000 for the Redlands Christian Migrant Association (RCMA), an Immokalee-based farmworker family support and education organization that helps more than 8,000 children.
After fortifying University of South Florida’s migrant worker education scholarships, this year’s event, held Feb. 12-13 in Tampa, shifted funding to the RCMA which is constructing a new school in Wimauma that will expand kindergarten and elementary school education to past fifth grade.
“The school is doing a fantastic job preparing children for higher education,” Wishnatzki said. “The kids that have been going through that program have been excelling in their education. By building additional classrooms, they will be able to stay until eighth grade and will help prepare them for high school and then onto college.”
Wishnatzki’s efforts are paying the college tuition for Clara Morales.
“I pray that I may be half the blessing to others that he has been to me,” she wrote. “He has also given my parents a reason to hope for a brighter future for me.”
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