La Colectiva de Mujeres (Women's Collective) in San Francisco has launched a media campaign unveiling striking posters, billboards, bus ads and postcards depicting domestic workers as strong, independent and "green" savvy.

The campaign, the theme of which is "Communicating Strength and Hope" ("Comunicando poder y esperanza"), aims to alter the perception of often undervalued domestic workers to one of respect, dignity and economic importance.

Campaign ads, which will run for one month, focus on the benefits of green cleaning and a call to action for employers to use non-toxic products that protect the workers and the families where they work.

La Colectiva, a worker-run collective, is a San Francisco/Bay Area-based membership organization of Latina immigrants that is part of La Raza Centro Legal. It works to achieve economic and social justice regardless of their immigration status. ??The group has spent the past year working with the Labor Occupational Health Program (LOHP) at UC Berkeley and Underground Advertising to build the ad campaign.

It's part of New Routes to Community Health, which is supporting eight projects across the nation through a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. New Route's focus is health immigrant integration through the use of media.

New Routes partners "immigrant groups, media makers and community organizations to define their own problems and use media to create solutions," explains Catherine Stifter of New Routes. The push for non-toxic products is a result of women reporting health problems related to toxic cleaning products, says Suzanne Teran, of LOHP. LOHP is one of the partners in the media campaign and worked closely with the workers.

"We know many of the cleaning products can also be harmful to the families if they have children. So we are promoting the training and knowledge that these domestic workers have to clean in a safe way, not only for themselves but for others," Teran says.

As part of the campaign, the group has collaborated with the San Francisco Department of Health to train members to protect themselves and members of the household where they are working by using safe, non-toxic products.

It includes an employer handbook, downloadable from this website, which offers a guide to green cleaning products and the department's safe home cleaning methods fact sheet.??The campaign targets female domestic workers in the community to become part of La Colectiva, and also focuses on attracting potential employers.

"I can't think of anybody I would trust more to take care of my elderly parents then the women I've had working for them for over five years who are members of the Colectiva," says employer Nicky Trevino.

"The doctors come to visit my parents and they remark 'who is taking care of your parents? They are under such good care.'"

La Colectiva has been a source of empowerment to domestic worker Maria Fernandez. When she first arrived in the U.S., she was hired as a domestic and not allowed to leave the house for one year.

"They told me not to go out because I didn't have papers. I would tell them I wanted to study English and they would tell me no because I didn't have papers, and if I went out I could get assaulted or killed or get lost. They made me very fearful," Fernandez said.

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