Jefferson Regional Foundation touts importance of completing census

Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the deadline to respond to the 2020 Census has been extended to Oct. 31. Jefferson Regional Foundation and Jefferson Collaborative are taking advantage of the delay by continuing to promote participation.

On Wednesday morning, the organizations distributed U.S. Census Bureau reminder materials in both English and Spanish to six local organizations — Bhutanese Community Association of Pittsburgh, Clairton Family Center, Jewish Family and Community Services, Jefferson Hospital-Front Door Initiative, Mon Valley Initiative and Whitehall Public Library, which hosted the event in its parking lot.

Mary Phan-Gruber, CEO of the Jefferson Regional Foundation, said that the event was the first of at least two safe, socially-distanced distributions planned by the foundation’s community engagement manager Colleen Cadman to continue to promote census participation in communities. All six organizations have been hailed as Census Champions for their involvement in the Jefferson Counts 2020 Census initiative.

“The organizations have participated in census activities over the past few months — and since covid, have been on monthly calls with us to work in creative ways to do outreach,” Phan-Gruber said. “These have included distributing census info during food or other distributions, yard signs, children’s books (and) stories about the census.”

Pre-pandemic, area libraries had been tapped to serve as hub sites for residents to use to complete their census forms. Now that many libraries are closed, Phan-Gruber said that the Census Bureau will have mobile staff who come to different sites with iPads to help people complete the census online. Dates and locations have not been confirmed.

“We want all of our local residents to be counted so jobs, roads, schools, even pandemic dollars are allocated to our local communities,” Phan-Gruber said. “So this extra time to complete the census is important.”