Faith Florez, the founder of the Latina Legacy Foundation and creator of the Calor app, is an inspirational young activist striving to make a change for the Latinx community.
Faith Florez is a third-generation Mexican-American activist from Shafter, California. She’s currently studying English at the University of Southern California (USC), and is hoping to attend law school after graduation. Although young, Florez has inspired other Latinx activists through her accomplishments of founding the Latina Legacy Foundation, and creating her app ‘Calor’. For these impressive achievements, she has been presented with a multitude of awards, such as the 2018 Young Changemaker Award and the 2019 Three Dot Dash Global Teen Leaders Award.
As a descendant of farmworkers, Florez is no stranger to the dangerous struggles they face, such as long hours, dehydration, and heat stroke (to name a few) - so, she created Calor (meaning ‘hot’ in Spanish) to help farmworkers advocate for themselves and their health. The app notifies them when they should take breaks, how to dress, and other helpful suggestions according to their unique health needs and local weather. It also utilizes GPS Tracking and pairs with the Apple Watch, allowing workers to quickly call 911 in case of a heat emergency. Her app came to life when her idea was selected by the USC Viterbi School of Engineering in 2016. Throughout the year, Florez worked alongside other students on the project until a web-based product was finished, later converting it to an app. The result was run as the first demo at Fabbri Farms, where she was able to get feedback from workers on how to make the app more useful. However, she didn’t stop there.