Texts, not door-knocks: Census outreach shifts amid virus

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Texts, not door-knocks: Census outreach shifts amid virus
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How do you conduct a massive headcount amid a global pandemic? The Census Bureau and outreach groups are pivoting to socially distant contingency plans.

This undated photo provided by Jasmine Cho, who was supposed to lead cookie decorating activities at Census events in Pittsburgh in March and April, shows cookies she decorated with U.S. Census themes. The spread of the novel coronavirus has waylaid 2020 census outreach efforts that were planned in advance to get as many people as possible counted in the once-a-decade head count.

“Right now, everybody is faced with figuring out how to outreach to our communities not being face to face,” said Jennifer Chau, leader of a coalition of Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander organizations in Phoenix that passed out 300 reusable boba tea cartons in January to anyone who signed a card pledging to complete their census form.

The groups are recalibrating their messaging to address the upheaval in people’s lives, including job losses and stay-at-home orders, and to focus on how census numbers help determine the distribution of federal aid or medical supplies their communities may get during the coronavirus crisis.

“Of all of our worst nightmares of things that could have gone wrong with the census, we did not anticipate this set of actions,” said Al Fontenot of the Census Bureau. “But our staff has been extremely resilient about looking for solutions.”

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