Vamos Outreach App
Designed in partnership with farmworker service and advocacy organizations, Vamos Outreach is a mobile and desktop app that assists outreach workers in planning, finding, conducting, tracking and reporting on outreach visits to migrant and seasonal farmworkers. Vamos is currently being used by organizations in six states across the country.
Ready to start using Vamos? Click here or scroll down for the contact form.
What is Vamos?
Vamos is a tool for outreach staff to plan, conduct, and track outreach to migrant & seasonal farmworkers. Using Vamos, organizations can import or create “Sites” (labor camps or houses where farmworkers live), “Groups” (collections of sites, like “Janeth’s camps for follow-up” or “Camps near our office”), plan “Routes” that connect directly to Google Maps, write up “Visits” (reports on trips made to a site), “Notes” (information or alerts that need follow up, color coded by priority), and identify “Contacts” (like growers or contractors) associated with each Site.
Vamos was created in close partnership with farmworker-serving organizations and continues to be updated based on regular feedback from those partners. Several of the software development apprentices who work on Vamos grew up in farmworker families themselves. Their experiences contribute to a one-of-kind app which uniquely meets the needs for farmworker organizations.
Features of the Desktop App
Check out a demo of the web app! (9 minutes – or see below for a 3 min version)
There is a web app (for use on a desktop computer) for staff to plan their outreach trips. “Managers” can register users and assign roles, like “Planners” and “Users” for Volunteers, that have different levels of permissions. Approved staff have the ability to:
- Bulk upload all the organization’s Sites via csv
- Create and edit new Sites and Groups
- View the organization’s Sites as a map, table, or cards
- View priority status and active/ inactive status via color coding directly on the map
- Add and assign searchable “Contacts” to each Site, like Growers and Contractors
- Customize the fields available for Sites, Visits, and Contacts, to mirror the information collected on your organization’s own Outreach and Employer Information Sheets
- Utilize Advanced Search to find Sites based on criteria like County, Arrival & Departure dates, Contact, Priority status, H2A, if the camp was visited yet this season, and more
- Create Routes for each outreach trip, and print directions in case of limited cell connection
- View Visits and Notes from previous outreach trips
- Add custom items that are regularly donated or distributed from your organization, for easy tracking later
- Adjust the exact location of a site by dragging a pin on the map
- Generate basic reports by exporting Site, Visit, Note data.
Features of the Mobile App
Check out a demo of the mobile app! (3 minutes)
Available on iOS and Android, Vamos Mobile was built for approved staff and volunteers to use while they are conducting outreach in the field. From within the app, users can:
- View Sites near your current location, or view Sites as a list or on a map
- Search for Sites by name, county, city, priority level, or Group
- Adjust the exact location of a Site from within the map
- Access pre-created Routes for a given outreach trip
- View descriptions, directions, and photos of a Site from the app
- Navigate to Sites directly from your phone’s map apps
- Add new Sites, including details about number of workers, arrival dates, description of entrance, etc.
- Track details of Visits, including donations of items
- Make “Notes” to flag key concerns, and assign priority status
- Take or upload photos of Sites directly from within the app
- View details of previous visits
- View all Contacts associate with that Site (e.g. growers or contractors).
Vamos Offline Mode is expected to be complete by mid-summer 2023, which will enable users to access Sites and enter in Visit information even if there is no cell signal whatsoever.
What Users Have to Say
Since starting to use Vamos for our outreach visits to farmworkers in Eastern North Carolina, it has already increased the effectiveness of our outreach efforts. We use the web app to plan our outreach, and we use the mobile app to locate labor camps, track our visits and donations, and make notes about anything that needs attention. Thanks to the app, our work is more efficient and productive. It used to take hours to plan outreach; now it only takes a few minutes!”
Lariza Garzon, Episcopal Farm Worker Ministry, North Carolina
Personally, I was excited about Vamos because of the streamlining. Before Vamos, we used a case database, excel sheets, all of our individual cell phones cameras, running Microsoft documents etc. to keep all of out outreach teams organized for reporting and planning purposes. With Vamos we have a one-stop-shop for everything. The experience with the Vamos team has been wonderful. Any issue I had was taken care of immediately and I was never made to feel like I was bothering them. The experience with the Vamos app as been equally great. It has been a huge time saver in that everything I need is in one spot. It has also helped me stay organized much more than years passed. Totally recommend any outreach workers give it a try.”
Molly Spaak, Migrant Legal Aid, Michigan
The Vamos App is poised to transform the way that we plan outreach and collect data. We could not be more excited to streamline our efforts in order to maximize our ability to form a fruitful relationship with our client base.”
Mario Solis and Elise Riveness, the Agricultural Worker Project, Southern Minnesota Regional Legal Services
Cost
Developing and maintaining complex mobile apps like Vamos requires significant time and resources on the part of our software developers. We want this technology to be accessible and affordable to groups doing important work to improve the lives of farmworkers, so we are willing to work with groups as much as possible though a sliding scale cost. In 2023, the cost will be between $2000 -$5000 per year per organizational subscription to use and maintain Vamos. For organizations with more than 1500 camps or more than 5 outreach workers, the cost could be higher, because the more people who use it and the more data collected, the more resources it requires to maintain. For organizations that cannot afford this range, please let us know and let’s see what we can work out. We want to make sure the groups who need it can use it.
Brief Vamos Demo
Here’s a 3-minute demo that highlights why farmworker outreach is a critical task, why it’s so challenging, and how Vamos helps organizations save valuable staff time by using the app to plan and track outreach.
Want your staff to use Vamos? Contact us.
About Code the Dream
Code the Dream offers free intensive training in software development to people from diverse low-income backgrounds. In CTD Labs, our coders work with experienced mentors to hone those skills by building apps and technology platforms for a range of startups, nonprofits and government clients. The ultimate aim of Code the Dream is to create a unique win-win, where our coders gain real experience building apps that make the world a little better place, and then use that experience to launch new careers with enormous opportunity for themselves, their families, and their communities.
Several of Code the Dream’s apprentice software developers come from farmworker families. One of the early developers was a DACA recipient from Mexico who lived with her family in single-room migrant farmworker housing for several years. Of all the Code the Dream projects she worked on, she felt particularly connected to this app because of her family’s work in agriculture. She knows firsthand the challenges the workers experience and she cares deeply about their struggles.
Learn more about how Vamos from started the idea of a software engineer volunteering with our original partner, the Episcopal Farm Worker Ministry, in this blog post.