A Manitoba honey farm is raising money for three Mexican workers they had employed this year, only for the women to be robbed at gunpoint on their trip home.
“They have worked hard and saved money for 4 months only to return home with fewer resources than they had when they left Mexico in the late spring,” Wendell Estate Honey wrote in its GoFundMe post.
Three women, identified as Isa, Jacque and Monse, worked as seasonal agricultural workers on the western Manitoba-based honey operation. They flew home to Mexico on Sept. 8.
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When the women arrived in Mexico City, they hired a van and driver to take them to their homes. Thieves stopped the van on the highway and robbed them.
The women lost their luggage, including gifts they’d purchased, Tim Wendell told the Co-operator. The thieves took all the cash the women had, their phones and one woman’s passport. When one of the women returned home, she realized the thieves had found her personal information on her phone and emptied her bank account.
Wendell said he’d been told there’s only a small chance the woman will be able to recoup her loss through mechanisms such as insurance.
“We just have to help them out the best we can,” Wendell said.
The farm launched a GoFundMe fundraising campaign online, with a goals of raising $18,000 (their best guess to reflect the value of the losses) to split among the women. At time of writing, it had raised a bit more than $6,500.
Wendell said the women have Canadian bank accounts that were not compromised, so the money can be safely desposited there for them to access. The farm has also donated funds..
Wendell said they also wanted to raise awareness about the possible risks facing temporary foreign workers who are travelling. He suggested workers take a hotel at the airport and drive home in daylight.
“It costs a little bit of money, but this costs a whole lot of money and trauma,” he said.
He added that in many years of his farm employing temporary foreign workers, this is the first time this has happened.
Wendell Estate Honey hires about two dozen temporary foreign workers from Mexico, Nicaragua and other countries, Wendell said.
The campaign can be found at https://gofund.me/09f7de27.
