Day Workers

Reston Interfaith has been actively engaged with the day worker community since 2002, when increasing tension between members of the Herndon community and day workers brought the Town of Herndon to our door for help. We began outreach to the workers, encouraging them to take the lead in enforcing the code of conduct they drafted with community members, and offering vocational training, English classes, and the same services we provide to others in the community -- food, financial assistance, shelter, health and mental care referrals, and legal aid and immigration counseling to workers and their families.

A town-sponsored community working group called for the establishment of a formal worker center to address public safety and health concerncs associated with existing unregulated gathering places and to meet other needs of the workers. Reston Interfaith supported efforts to identify a location that would be accessible to workers and acceptable to the community.

Project Hope & Harmony, a diverse, community-based coalition, grew from these efforts. In 2004, Project Hope & Harmony and Reston Interfaith identified a vacant lot owned by the Town of Herndon as a potential location. Fairfax County stepped forward to offer support for local strategies to address day worker gathering sites.

The Herndon Official Workers Center, a formalized day worker hiring center operated by Reston Interfaith on behalf of Project Hope & Harmony, opened on December 14, 2005.  Click here to read more about the establishment of the Center and its first year of operations.  The Town of Herndon closed the Center on September 14, 2007, and workers returned to streets to connect with employers.