Location: Escondido, California
The San Diego County agriculture sector is marked as the 12th largest economy in California and 19th largest economy nation-wide, contributing a value of $1.8 billion dollars to San Diego County per year. The City of Escondido takes part in the harvest of crops and, more recently, has faced labor shortages putting a strain on many farm owners and crop providers.
Escondido has the highest number of homeless people in the northern area of San Diego County. According to Escondido Based Community Services, the most common reason for homelessness is illness or disability at 43%, followed by job loss at 25%, and lower personal economics at 14%. To get homeless people back into the workforce, a wellness program has been designed to improve mental health, improve skill sets, provide employment, and income opportunities through a card payment and/or voucher system between farmers, the city, San Diego Metropolitan Transit System, and non-government organizations through agricultural therapy, meditation, and social services. The program will work closely with farms and agricultural marketplaces that need more hands-on-assistance. Participants will be given basic job skills, training, and will be matched with a social worker to work on specific goals through a written agreement of cooperation. An interactive dashboard has been developed to provide awareness of the program.
Layth Zubaidi is a Master of Science in Big Data Analytics Student in the Department of Geography, College of Arts and Letters at San Diego State University in San Diego, California.
Resources
Instructor
Dr. Gabriela Fernandez
Graduate Course
Smart Cities and Sustainability. Data Science Methods for Smart City Applications
Master of Science in Big Data Analytics Program,
Department of Geography, College of Arts and Letters, San Diego State University, San Diego, California, Spring 2022
Schedule Number #20470
English