About FLAP
From a 1999 founding in Illinois to a nationwide network today — FLAP is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit dedicated to improving working conditions and opportunities for the workers who feed and shape our country
Our History
The Farmworker and Landscaper Advocacy Project — Proyecto de Ayuda para Trabajadores del Campo y Jardineros — was incorporated February 8, 1999 in response to a 1996 Congressional ruling that prohibited federally funded legal services programs from filing class actions for, and representing, many low-wage workers. This prohibition includes H-2A agricultural workers, H-2B forestry workers, and victims of battery, extreme cruelty, sexual assault, human labor trafficking and human sex trafficking.
Justice and legal representation — that for decades inspired millions of oppressed low-wage people to come to America — were denied to hundreds of thousands of low-wage hard workers. While FLAP serves all classifications of workers, it focuses on very low-wage laborers and their households, because those laborers feed our families and contribute to the economy of the world.
FLAP's mission is to improve working conditions and opportunities, free of charge, for low-wage workers and their households in the cannery, farming, greenhouse, landscaping, meat, nursery, packinghouse, poultry, restaurants, and snow plowing industries.
Because of the population FLAP serves, FLAP does not receive funding from the Federal Legal Services Corporation.
Who We Are
FLAP is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization incorporated in the State of Illinois on February 8, 1999, with a nationwide network across the United States. We celebrate the diversity of the workers we serve and have a 27-year reputation for hiring from within those communities — the work is more effective and more responsive when the team reflects the people it stands beside.
Accomplishments
The fight against family separations, wage theft, and human labor and sex trafficking goes on. Here's what your support has made possible.
Service Areas
FLAP has a nationwide network. Through partnerships with seven different consulates — Argentinian, Colombian, Ecuadorian, Salvadorian, Guatemalan, Mexican, and Peruvian — FLAP reaches 13 of the 50 states, bringing social and legal resources to approximately 3,000 low-wage people each week.
We have recovered more than $5 million in back wages and illegal deductions through this network. To learn more about whether FLAP can help in your area, get in touch.
How We Work
FLAP relies on a network of more than 400 organizations and qualified attorneys to handle legal cases. This network lets us provide low-wage workers — who have suffered damages without compensation — with reliable legal assistance across employment, personal injury, consumer, education, housing, family, immigration, and workers' compensation cases, among others.
FLAP is an ideal cy pres recipient for class action settlements. Awards directly fund free legal services and outreach for the workers our system was built to leave out.
Annual reports, 990 financial filings, “Know Your Rights” flyers, and downloadable materials for workers, partners, and supporters.
Get involved
Whether you're a worker who needs help, a partner organization, or a supporter — there's a way in.
Stay involved
Get bilingual updates from the field, or fund the legal services and outreach that make this work possible.
Every dollar puts another worker one step closer to dignity — funding free legal services, outreach, and direct financial assistance for families.
