Tech Solution for Farm Workers
Our First Tech App
An app to be piloted in the hot agricultural fields of California that protects the lives of farm workers with a wearable watch application that provides immediate heat warnings, health notification and proactive heat stress education. My mission is to change “work or health to work AND health.”
Legacy Problem
Farm workers harvest in some of the hottest regions of the country with at least four US farm workers die from heat annually—20 times the rate in all non-military employees, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. There have over 55 heat related death in California agricultural fields over the last decade according to California Occupational Safety Health agency.
Novel Tech Driven Solutions
Farm workers will have access to wearable Apple Watches in the pilot. Farmers will either directly or through their contractors provide a wearable watch at the beginning of the harvest job to their farm workers. Farmers in the original pilot will purchase the watches, however we are fundraising to help defer this cost. In the future, as an financial incentive, we expect farmers and insurance companies seeking lower workers compensation rates to use the watch/app to reduce heat illness and improve health.
Built On Research
The original concept and plan for the farm work heat stress protection app was the brain child of our Latina Legacy founder Faith Florez, who was fortunate enough to have her proposal selected by graduate coding students at USC’s Viterbi School of Engineering in 2016.
The final product was the first ever farm worker heat notification web-based application developed after an intense year of meetings with farmers, contractors, farm workers, and state regulators.
Farms Wising to Utilize Calor On Their Farms
If you are farm entity wishing to utilize Calor for your farming operations, please download the Calor app on the Apple store below and contact us at dean@latinalegacyfoundation.org
The Calor team will then allow you accesss to the management dash board which will allow you to fully monitor farm workers on your farms for health protection and activity.
The fundraising campaign is hosted on StartSomeGood which is the world’s leading crowdfunding platform for social impact projects. The crowdfunding site is helping us raise the funds necessary to create tangible social good for farm workers that toil in the hot agricultural fields of this nation.
Join Us in Funding Lifesaving App for Farmworkers
Latina Legacy Foundatiion is a Section 501(c)3 nonprofit and you donation will count as a charitable deduction for federal income tax purposes.
Our Founder
Farm Worker Roots
Faith Florez is currently a senior at La Canada High School and has a passion for protecting the lives of farm workers. She was born and raised in the predominately Latino Central Valley in early childhood.
Faith's family, the Florez's, have worked and lived in farm worker communities since the 1900's, picking every crop imaginable -- grapes, almonds, roses, cotton, watermelons, strawberries, and carrots. Her great-grandmother, Stella Florez, died as a result of years of farm labor, leaving a lasting impact on Faith’s desire to use her education to create social impact solutions for farm workers.
Furthering her educational experiences, Faith attended Smith College’s Young Women Creative Writing Program and Brown University‘s Summer College Program. A national AP Scholar, Faith is also a 4 year varsity swimmer, Op-Ed contributor, Theater/Drama actor and sings in her schools prestigious Chamber Choir.
Leadership
Faith was selected a HerLead Fellow based in New York City during the summer of 2017. She was among 30 young high school women chosen nationally through a partnership between Ann Taylor, LOFT, Lou & Grey, and Vital Voices designed to equip young women with the leadership skills they need to effect global progress and invest in their communities.
A select number of the most powerful ideas receive a HERlead Project Grant to help further implementable projects. Faith‘s farmworker app recently received this distinction aimed at helping young women leaders bring their vision to life.
Faith is also researching issues affecting the farm worker community, currently working with Yale Professor Anthony Mendez on climate change, water and disadvantaged communities in California’s Central Valley as her Senior Year independent project.
Her original concept for a farm worker heat app was selected by the USC Viterbi School of Engineering in 2016 where she lead a coding development team for over a year ending with a web-based heat stress app.
Vision
Recognizing she comes from a legacy of farm workers, Faith believes that its up to the next generation to leverage technology for real world solutions to make back breaking work humane and health focused.
Faith started with a vision that we need to update protections for farm workers laboring in our grueling century’s old agricultural industry with technology innovations. Her new Calor app, through cellular capabilities, is now able to provide new wearable protections unthinkable a decade ago that solve everyday work problems such as heat stress.
Big concepts do not happen with out support and guidance. Faith has been fortunate to have a strong set of women mentors to learn from including Senator Martha Escutia, Senator Ret. and Senator Kamala Harris (CA) where she completed an internship and had support from HERlead mentors like Kah Walla, Maria Pacheco, and Priti Paktar.