Last night marked the beginning of our Fall 2019 Census Outreach and Engagement campaign with Fil community-based and student organizations — woohoo, sound off!
Katie Mendoza, an organizer on our Civic Engagement Team (also a graduate student in SFSU’s MPA program and a staff of Filipino Advocates for Justice), led our first Census Activation with Kappa Psi Epsilon at SFSU last night. Katie’s workshop included contextual information on California’s Bay Area Fil Community, the importance of the Census, and a technical timeline of the Census’ deployment in April 2020.
LEAD Filipino’s Census Education & Outreach Campaign:
From October through January, our Civic Engagement Team will be hitting the field and leading curated Census Activations/Workshops within our neighborhoods and communities on the Filipin@ community’s relationship to the 2020 Census (which begins on April 1, 2020).
Did you know that the Census is like a high school reunion? It’s completely abstract, happens every 10 years…and people only think about it, when it’s right around the corner — EXCEPT that the Census has deep implications for social service financial resource allocation to cities, counties, and states; the Census determines district boundaries for congressional seats; and the Census tells us how many people live in the U.S. and where — with specific details on race, ethnicity, age, and socioeconomic status.
With 1.5 million Filipin@s in California, our community — alike others — has a big stake in the outcome of the Census, particularly with ensuring that our community is counted.
The 2020 Census will be the first in its 230-year, 22 times implemented, history that it’ll be completely paperless. Because of this, the state of California has identified 7 unique categories of “hard to count communities” and Filipin@s hit 3 of these 7 categories. The hard to count categories are:
- Homeless community members
- Seniors and aging adults
- Multi-generation households (includes college dormitories, apartments, and condominiums)
- Undocumented community members
- Low socioeconomic status community members
- Young children (mainly under 5 y/o)
- Non-english speaking community members*
The 2020 Census questionnaire will be offered in 12 non-English languages: Arabic, Chinese, French, Haitian, Creole, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Tagalog, and Vietnamese.*
In the coming months we’ll be leading Census workshops with:
- De Anza College (Nov 2019)
- California State University East Bay (Nov 2019)
- Stanford University (Nov 2019)
- Santa Clara University (Nov 2019)
- San Francisco State University (happened Oct. 28, 2019)
For more information on our Census work, please contact Angelica Cortez at Angelica@LEADFilipino.org.
