Meet Latina founder Faith Florez who founded the Calor App which is keeping our migrant farmworkers safe in extreme conditions.
Calor is an app developed to work with smart watch technology to provide heat warnings, notifications on health, and educate the wearers about heat stress.
There are between 2-3 million farmworkers in the United States, approximately 75% of which were born in Mexico. The states with the highest farmworker population are California, Texas, Washington, Florida, Oregon, and North Carolina.
According to the CDC website, 43% of all heat related deaths have occurred in Arizona, Texas, and California. With approximately 1.5- 2 Million migrant farmworkers spread through out the US and a vast majority of them concentrated in California and Texas, Migrant Farmworkers are one of the highest populations at-risk for heat-related illnesses.
Heat related illnesses, also called hyperthermia, are caused by exposure to extreme heat conditions where the body cannot properly cool itself off. Generally, when the body heats up, we produce sweat and the evaporation of that sweat helps to cool the body naturally.
In extreme heat and humidity situations, the sweat doesn’t evaporate effectively and the body can suffer from heat exhaustion, heat stroke, or it can exacerbate pre-existing conditions, most notably those associated with the heart and respiratory systems.
Latina founder Faith Florez’s grandmother died working in the fields from heat exhaustion. This young change-maker saw an opportunity to provide for our community that provides so much for all of us, and is often overlooked.
Florez didn’t just stop at the development of the Calor App; knowing that many of the farmworkers would not be able to afford this technology, she enlisted the farms themselves to invest in the technology to keep our farmworkers safe.
With the support of the Calor app, we are moving closer to creating safer working structures for our migrant farmworkers. Thank you Faith Florez and the whole team at Calor for supporting our community! Classy Latina loves you!