Excerpt: Remezcla
Farmworkers play an invaluable (and often unappreciated) role in this country’s food industry. They’re also subjected to grueling conditions, including working in temperatures that can hit triple digits. As the daughter and granddaughter of farmworkers, Faith is aware of how taxing this job is to the largely immigrant workforce. “I don’t want to hear about a farmworker that died because they were too far away from water and shade,” Florez told 23ABC.
That’s why she launched Calor, an app that tells farmworkers when their health is at risk. Though she knew what she wanted to accomplish with Calor, it took some time to bring it to fruition. She first submitted her idea to the USC Viterbi School of Engineering, where graduate students decided to take on the project. But there were many lingering questions. “Where are we going to get the weather data from, how are we going to sponsor the GPS tracking, how are we going to make this a hotline?” Florez recalled.