Make the Census Counts Everyone
The Southern Coalition for Social Justice has been working for the past months to give Census Outreach Mini-Grants to community organizations in Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, Florida, and Louisiana that are a trusted voice in their communities. The mini-grants are given to organizations who create projects which raise awareness of the importance of the census in underrepresented and undercounted communities.
Project examples include
1. A community organization could give out water bottles with census information in Spanish to migrant farmworkers at a farmworker camps in rural North Carolina
2. A community organization can perform a bilingual play about the importance of the census at a local community center.
If your organization is interested on creating similar outreach programs, and would like some funding for this crucial work, check out our website and application HERE.
Grant applications are being accepting on a rolling basis until September 30th, 2009!
The 2010 Census will be one of the largest civil projects in the history of the US, employing hundreds of thousands of census workers, all in attempt to make sure that everyone is counted. Unfortunately, the Census Bureau estimates that it missed over 3 million people, or the equivalent of the entire state of Mississippi.
The Census Matters
Census counts are directly tied to the federal dollars communities receive for important services such as education
funding, affordable housing support, job training, social services, roads, bridges, and other community development opportunities.
Census counts also directly impact a community’s political voice because the numbers inform voting districts and determine how communities are represented. The 2010 Census will trigger a new round of revisions in elected districts across the country. State and local governments throughout the country will be using Census data to shape and reshape districts for partisan political gain. These revisions will have a direct impact on the reservation of and the expansion of underrepresented peoples electoral opportunities and representation for the next decade.
Who doesn’t get counted?
Careful studies of past census counts demonstrate that certain communities are at higher risk of not being counted accurately. These communities include
• Communities and People of Color,
• People and families that live in rental property
• Transient communities, such as the homeless and migrant workers
• Native Americans and poor, rural communities
• Immigrants (census counts are for everyone, regardless of citizenship status)
• The elderly and people who live in group housing
You can learn more:
Southern Coalition for Social Justice
Census Bureau