How to text 1000 farmworkers in less than a minute

Did you know that about 8.6 trillion text messages are sent each year? That includes 6 billion per day in the US alone.

And farmworkers are no exception to the texting trend. In fact, according to a 2015 Pew Research Center survey, 87% of latinos use their phones for texting--a higher rate than the average in the US.

Facebook, Facebook Messenger, YouTube and Whatsapp are the most popular apps used by US farmworkers in our surveys. Whatsapp is especially popular with those that still have very close ties to Mexico since Whatsapp is far more popular than text messaging south of the border. Farmworkers, too, are living in the digital age!

Thanks to grower & farmworker feedback, Ganaz can now be used to send text messages to workers that don't yet have the Ganaz app. 

Here's how to do it:

  1. From your Ganaz app, choose "Communicate with my workers"

  2. Choose the workers from your address book you'd like to communicate with OR, if you have a large number of workers, send us a spreadsheet with their phone numbers and we'll add them to your account

  3. Once you've chosen all the workers you want to add to the message, click Continue

  4. Type your message, and auto-translate into Spanish if you'd like and hit "Submit."

Voilá or rather, Andale! Workers that have an account on the app already will receive your message in their Ganaz message inbox. Workers without an account will get a text message. At this point, only users that have the app can respond to you. 

So here's your question: how important is it to you that workers without the Ganaz app be able to send you a response?