Census Walk

The Census walk really brought to light how important the census is to our community. Not too many people showed up but the fact that people with power showed up really showed the importance. There were a few people who live around here that did show up so it was impressive because not too many people know about this so any one showing up is good. Then the people leading this event really tried to educate us on how the census works and the laws in place to protect people privacy. Since our community is made up of people from around the world and some are here illegally they fear that putting the information on the census will really get them in some trouble with the law. The census though has no questions to do with that sort of things, so people should not worry about this. People who work with the census also make a pledge of secrecy and any questions asked will be safe. All the census tries to do is find out how many people live here so we can get enough money to support the community. We were also provided with census gear because some people try to take advantage of this event that occurs every ten years and say they are with the census and take people’s information to commit fraud. This is such a big deal that we as volunteers were not taking information but we still had to show that we weren’t fake. Then we got an area to go around asking people to please fill out their census and answer their questions the best we could. We went with a partner one that was 18 and older and someone that wasn’t so I was with Sam, I was 18 and she wasn’t and luckily for me we got my street. It made things much easier because I had to talk to my neighbors. Some of the awkwardness was taken away but it was still very interesting to see how little people know about the census. IT went smoothly and afterwards we went back and turned in our information.