Each year, countless migrant laborers travel from Mexico, Honduras, Haiti and other economically challenged countries to rural areas in the Southeastern U.S. to harvest fruits and vegetables, often with children in tow. In many cases, parents are unable to put their infants and toddlers in day care and are forced to take them into the fields.

Enter the East Coast Migrant Head Start Project (ECMHSP), a federally funded nonprofit organization created in 1974. Each year, the group provides free child care to roughly 5,000 migrant workers’ children, ages six weeks to five years. Often the program is operated out of old schools and churches.