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Census outreach begins push

Census outreach begins push

By Deborah Barfield Berry
Gannett News Service • March 15, 2010

Throughout the Gulf Coast, community groups are
knocking on doors and visiting churches and local
businesses to remind residents to fill out census
forms.

National and local groups are targeting minority
communities where people have traditionally been
undercounted in the decennial population tally. An
increasing number of those communities are in the
South, census experts and advocates say.

An inaccurate count could shortchange minority
communities desperate for federal funds, civil rights
groups say. Census data is used to distribute $400
billion and determine the number of seats each state
gets in the House of Representatives.

"The stakes are at an extremely all-time high," said
Hilary Shelton, director of the Washington bureau of
the NAACP.

The national NAACP has mobilized its 2,000 offices
to do census outreach.

Local organizations play a key role in getting hard-
to-count groups to fill out and return census forms,
said Robert Groves, director of the Census Bureau.
This year's census is counting on help from nearly
200,000 outreach partners, including national and
local civil rights groups, community organizations,
sororities, churches and government agencies.

"The money involved is real," Groves said. "If they
don't mobilize their groups, their groups will be
hurt."
 
Civil rights organizations and community groups
began gearing up for the 2010 census a year ago.
Volunteers on the Gulf Coast have hosted town
halls, set up booths at festivals, held block parties
and showed up at schools. Volunteers recently
teamed with students from Xavier University in New
Orleans to canvass the Lower Ninth Ward, an area
hard hit by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

In addition, a national coalition of civil rights
groups has focused outreach efforts on the South.

"In the South, blacks are in urban as well as rural
settings, which can make them even harder to
count," said Melanie Campbell, executive director of
the National Coalition for Black Civic Participation.

Gulf Coast groups targeted in the outreach effort
include:


n Hispanics and Asian Americans who have been
migrating southward since 2000, attracted by the
warmer weather, affordable housing and jobs in
fishing and agriculture.

n People originally from the Caribbean and Africa
who Campbell says have a "major distrust of the
government."

n Residents displaced by hurricanes Rita and
Katrina in 2005, the mortgage crisis and the
constant search for a job. Census workers will
hand-deliver forms to some Gulf Coast areas hard-
hit by Katrina.

n Non-English speakers, immigrants, poor people
and young children.