1187 Culver Road

Rochester, NY 14609

 

Phone: 585-325-3050

Fax: 585-325-7614

E-mail: pbillyard@wnylc.com

Farmworker Legal Services of New York, Inc.

Putting Farm Workers First!

Using Technology to Reach More Farm Workers

(Using Google Earth for a Down-to-Earth Problem)

One of the largest obstacles in conducting effective outreach to farm workers is being able to locate workers and make a coherent record of their locations.  This is due in large part to the fact that farms and labor camps tend to be found on small roads, often poorly marked and sometimes not marked at all.  Given the inherent difficulty of giving verbal directions to such locations, many farm worker advocates come to rely on their own mental maps.  While this method can be sufficient in the short term, it leaves the agency with a dearth of crucial information when that advocate is no longer available. 

At FLSNY, we have found a solution to this problem in the form of Google Earth, a computer program that allows users to assign digital, color-coded place

markers to any point in the world.  In concept, Google Earth is essentially a high-tech version of mounting a map on the wall and pushing some tacks in.  In practice, however, the program offers a far better mapping system than would be possible outside the digital world.  Among its most useful features for us:

· Directions from one place mark to another, which can then be printed directly from the program

· GPS coordinates for every point on the globe (this will be particularly useful if we adopt the use of portable GPS units in the future, as some other farm worker service agencies have already done)

· A system of maps from the global

· scale to the surprisingly local, all constantly updated through an internet connection with Google

· Collapsible “tags” for each place mark, so that users can assign infinite amounts of information to each place mark but keep their map uncluttered. 

FLSNY has already added hundreds of tags to each outreach location so each staff member will know the trafficking status, whether there is suspected trafficking and information and alerts regarding the living conditions of the camps.

For more information regarding Google Earth, call Owen Thompson at FLSNY.

FLSNY Staff

Lewis Papenfuse, Executive Director

Erin F. Casey, Staff Attorney

Molly Graver, Staff Attorney

Peg Billyard, Information Analyst

Alina Diaz, DV Advocate

Cheryl Gee, DV Coordinator

Deepa Premnath, Pesticide Educator

Renan Salgado, Trafficking Advocate

James Schmidt, Consultant to the Board

Owen Thompson, Trafficking Advocate

Yolanda Villa, DV Advocate