 A hundred workers' day begins in the pre-dawn hours and lasts until the hot air on a sun blazes high. Working days are few and when the crop is ripe the whole family turns out. Children are thought to be a form of wealth because they can increase the family's income. But the wealth is spurious. What money they earn now must last through the long growing season when only nature can work. Donald Jackson, a retired agricultural specialist, is starting a new life as a Vista volunteer. He's been assigned to the migrant opportunity program in Stanfield, Arizona. Vistas from 18 to 85 volunteer to live and work among the poor for a year. Their only remittance is their living expenses and a token wage. But their purpose is not money. It's to help people to help themselves. What is migrant opportunity program? Some kind of charity? Not exactly. Definitely not charity. What we're doing now is developing a daycare center to take care of children and mothers who are working. Well, you find the right gal. I have three youngsters. I'll give a few without any fuss at all. I'll pay the dollar a day for child for babysitting and I'll only earn seven. I had something a little different in mind. We've been getting recommendations from people for teacher's aids and your names come up several times. My name? You any out of how much school I've had? Three years including kindergarten. That's not necessarily a problem. You mean the federal government from Washington D.C. want me to work for them? What's the matter? They don't have enough trouble? We are here that you'd be very good working your children. Well, I've had plenty of practice. How much they pay? About $200. $200 a month? Well, if they're willing, I'm willing. Good. Mind if I stock up on some water? Your wife was by earlier today, Abe. She took some water home. Boss says only five gallons a day to a family. I only want to get some water for these gentlemen. Hi. You fellas going to Allenville? Yes. We're VISTAs working for the migrant opportunity program. Opportunity, huh? You might call it that. Things have been pretty peaceful between Allenville and the town. And we like it that way. I think you better get your water somewhere else. Five years ago, Abe Harris had enough money to move away from Allenville to a place where drinking water comes from a faucet instead of a gas station. Recently, the migrant opportunity program persuaded him to come back. An open sewer forms the boundary on two sides of Allenville, which has no sanitation system of its own. A waste which creeps through the ditch comes from the white community a mile away. Today, Abe's joined by two VISTA volunteers who begin to learn of the conditions they'll face during the next year. They'll live in Allenville working under Abe's supervision. And summer flies and mosquitoes will multiply in the ditch in temperatures up to 115 degrees. Winter floods will carry this sewage into the streets and into the homes of the people of Allenville. Besides the absence of good water and sanitation, the 400 people of Allenville have no stores, no mail delivery, no street lights, no stop signs. Both in money and in self-esteem to fight for what they need. Some even live in abandoned buses. When Abe arrived, he began to chip away at the bitterness which has encrusted Allenville. He founded an organization called Allenville Community for Progress, which is forming plans the VISTAs will help to carry out. There's a lot to do. Great Kelly begins to have second thoughts about a year's commitment to Allenville. We've got you this refrigerator. It's not the great... The only thing, you just have to get the hang of it a little bit. Bob breathing and for Abe, the hardships do not seem overwhelming. I think I got it. Okay, I'll be here. It's whether he can change the feeling of defeat he senses all around him. How much difference will it really make if he stays or goes? Can he overcome his feeling of awkwardness as a white and ennegrous community? What happened to you? Got hit by a car up at the corner. Lucky it'll walk again. Some kid was using the street for a speed limit. What's the speed limit here? Ain't no speed limit, no stop sign either. You wanted them VISTAs? That's right. I'm Larry Kelly. I'm Vera. What are you guys supposed to be doing here? Well, we'll be working with Abe, trying to get a line on what you need the most and help you get it. What do you think you need the most around here? Everything. Where do you think we can start? The only way we're going to get anything valid here from stop sign to drinking water is to change the color of our skin. You got a way to do that, mister. That night, the Allendale community for progress holds its weekly meeting. I would like to extend a welcome to the two VISTA volunteers who arrived here this morning. And I would like for you here to introduce them. Well, recently, Allendale was a pawn. Now we have become a river. And we are beginning to move. Well, VISTA friends are here to help us keep moving. They haven't had a chance to get to New Allendale, but maybe they would like to say a few words about their own ideas. I'd like for you to meet. I think it's a little bit too early right now to make any suggestions. But there is one thing. Maybe we could organize a cleanup campaign. And stop signs. We might look into the idea of stop signs. I'd like for you to meet Robert Breven. I'd like to see us get good water. Water fit enough to drinks that you don't have to worry about your kids getting sick. Fifty miles away in Stanfield, the Migrant Opportunity Program is converting a church basement into a daycare center for migrant children. Donald does screens to serve as room dividers. Once the daycare center opens, Donald's wife Nora joins the staff of professionals and teachers' aides who care for children while their mothers work. Probably we have to come and bring them. The idea of such a center is alien to the Indians and Mexican-Americans who find it hard to entrust their children to strangers. Oh, that's fine, Virgil. Migrants have stayed outside the mainstream of American life. They cling to ideas which serve them well in another time and place, but now tend to entrap them. One of the things which interested the Jacksons in joining Vista. When Donald retired last year, he was weighing an offer of a teaching post in a remote corner of India. But Vista offered the opportunity to do similar work in the pockets of cultural isolation here in America. The children who are hungry and malnourished make sure they get at least one good meal a day. She speaks to them in English, a language they may be hearing for the first time. The teachers' aide Donald recruited joins other members of the staff in another vital change. Many children come to the center with dirt and lice, but they go home clean. The staff scrubs their bodies and disinfects their clothing. The appearance is an unspoken message to their parents who soon send them to school looking better and scratching less. Like all married couples in Vista, their Jacksons join together and now serve together in different capacities. They take children to the mobile medical unit which visits the area every week. Little Linda Suarez. Hello, Linda. Sure, Linda's been here before. Linda, do you want to step up here and get on the table? Yes. The child appears to have a mild anemia. I think she needs vitamins and... Many migrant children have never been examined by a doctor. You think you can eat a good supper tonight? Okay, sweetie. That's fine. For you, I haven't seen you before. Do you want to step up here? Ricky Lewis. Can you jump up here, Ricky? Is this the air that hurts, Ricky? There is an infection of the middle ear. Beautify Allenville Week begins. A month of planning and recruiting yields only one beautifier, the committee chairman. In the talking stage, Larry's idea received enthusiastic support, but Allenville's men, weary from a week of backbreaking work, are spending their Saturday in their customary way. Hey, you people down there, get with it. Come on, come on, get with it. While the chairman goes off to round up help, there is just one thing to do, and that is to begin. It still feels that stop signs, drinking water, or any form of progress are not in the cards for Allenville. Madam Chairman rounds up her committee to redeem promises made on cooler days. The daycare center is not a complete success. Many migrants have never heard of it. Others are afraid of it. The Jacksons decide to borrow a trailer, fill it with a sampling of toys, and carry the arguments for the center from one migrant camp to the next. Tough going, because the Mexican American has good reasons not to trust the Anglo, as he calls the white man. The Anglo pays him little, charges high rents for shacks with holes in the roof. The migrant wants to live as he did in Mexico. The man wants his woman and his children together all day long. No matter how much they need the money, he does not want his wife to work. Rest time for the children. They have orange juice. He values the solidarity of his family, and yet it disconnects him from the rest of the world. The Jackson's trailer arouses enough curiosity to break through the initial distrust. I'd love to have you come in here. At first, people must be convinced one by one. Though toys and facilities are in abundance, the center's purpose is not babysitting. It's to give the children a head start in school. Migrant children have much to learn. Some have never seen a bathroom. Most do not speak English, and thus face a handicap later on in school. The Jackson's must discuss these needs for the children without shaming the parents. When key people are won over, others will follow. Following the crops in unfamiliar places, migrants often run out of gas and out of luck. They must take shelter where they find it. In abandoned houses, if they are lucky. In the picking season, Vista has learned to watch the countryside for astranded migrants. Hey! Where are you going? I don't understand English. He said, I don't want to walk anymore. My family is there, and even my wife is there. She's going to have a baby. Does your wife have any groceries, any come here for the children? I don't know what you're talking about. Well, you stay over there with the family, and my wife and I, my spouse and I, we'll get gasolina. Gasolina is good, a lot of people get gasolina. We'll get gasolina. We'll come back. Okay. First aid is not their main work. The Jacksons can do little for this family's future until they have food and shelter. The migrant opportunity provides an emergency ration of food and a translator. Dispense. Does he want smork around here? Isn't there smork chopping cotton over at Lala's camp? I guess so, but it's better to see the contractor. I'd better speak to Lala. I think we can get him a cabinet in Lala's camp. With the successful trash cleanup behind them, Bob and Larry splurge to celebrate in town with aid. Whenever they leave Allendill, they're reminded that the white community is still resentful and suspicious of the vistas. Yet, only so much can be done without support outside of Allendill. The war on poverty is just not another government handout. In places like the local bowling alley, Larry and Bob begin to approach informally the residents of the white community. Well, what do you fellas actually do here? Hey, Larry, would you like to tackle that? Well, when Bob and I first came to Allendill... They talk about Allendill, what it's doing for itself and why they are spending a year helping the people to improve their living conditions. But the problems still seem abstract, remote. Of a neglected ghetto. I think you gentlemen should come down and see it for yourself. The group which Larry and Bob bring to Allendill is one of the leaders except for Bill collectors. Like many poverty towns, Allendill's been a political orphan unclaimed by any larger community, gerrymandered out of funds for its most urgent needs. Bill needs spokesmen to take a stand, people who will ask questions and take back answers to those with power to make changes. Perhaps one man will respond with more than sympathy to this confrontation with the face and smell of poverty. It surprises the skeptics in Allendill who believed they could never get a hearing from the white community. Bathroom, bathing. But we don't drink it. How come you don't drink it? Some of the people do, but they get bad teeth, back aches, kidney trouble. The county says it's okay, but I don't drink it. Would you like a cup? It's a sign that if dialogue is starting someone might listen to her. There is on ground as unfamiliar to her as Allendill was to the whites. What do we see about stop signs? Will you go out in the hall, make a left turn? The ladies are introduced to the tribulations of bureaucracy which are needed out impartially to all races and creeds. Go out in the hall, make a left turn, and then another left turn, and there's a first door on your right. Thank you. You go out this door, take your first turn to the left, and then there's a first door on the left. Thank you. You're welcome. Vera has news. Rise for milk in a migrant camp. At the moment the baby has milk and a roof, what kind of a future can he have? Donald wants to talk to the father about the future, but they do not speak the same language. All he can do is show him the machine which competes more and more with migrants unskilled hands. And a crew of five can replace a field of migrant workers. Only by training for another occupation and by learning English can the future be secure. One must learn a skill which will survive the encroachment of the machine. Very Allenville's not changed very much during Bob and Larry's year there, but the cloud of futility has lifted and a relationship with the white community has begun to grow. The plan to cover the sewer is in operation. Drinking water is the next problem that Allenville must face. But the people of Allenville now know that progress, however slow, is within their grasp. In Abe's words, they have become a river, not a pond. In Stanfield, the machine repair shop has a new apprentice. What are you doing, Gus? I am doing okay. No!