Immigrant Complete Count Committee

 

As of January 1, 2021, the Immigrant Complete Count Committee is no longer active.

The Immigrant Complete Count Committee (ICCC) intended to bring together a cross-section of community members whose focus is 2020 Census awareness to increase the self-response rate for foreign-born and limited English proficiency households. By forming a committee, the intention was to utilize the local knowledge, expertise, and influence of each Immigrant Complete Count Committee member to design and implement a census awareness campaign targeted to the foreign-born and limited English proficiency community. 

The ICCC’s priorities included the following items:

  • Develop a list of immigrant communities, leaders, and organizations to target for collaboration with ICCC 

  • Create unified messaging to address myths and alleviate fears about the privacy and confidentiality of census data within target communities 

  • Promote census worker jobs within target communities 

  • Host Census Solutions Workshops with others in the community 

  • Have census posters, banners, and other signage placed in highly visible public locations 

  • Include the 2020 Census logo and message on brochures, newsletters, social media sites, and organization websites 

  • Organize cross-promotion of community census events and those hosted by member organizations, aligning member census events on an ICCC events calendar 

  • Add a census message during meetings, events, and to written or digital/electronic correspondence 

  • Plan a major promotional event around the start of the self-response period or when households get their invitation to respond

Participants

  • ISPN also formally established a Complete Count Committee between six agencies:

    • Bilingual International Assistant Services (BIAS) 

    • Casa De Salud 

    • Immigrant and Refugee Women's Project (IRWP) 

    • The International Institute of St. Louis (IISTL) 

    • LifeWise STL 

    • St. Francis Community Services 

  • In addition to these organizations, other local service providers, community organizations, and collaborators working within immigrant communities across the St. Louis region will be invited to participate as a part of the Immigrant Complete Count Committee, led by and accountable to the ISPN. The ICCC effort will focus on convening, coordinating and building the capacity of each member organization and of those embedded leaders in target communities to do direct outreach. 

Timeline:

  • In September 2019, members and affiliates of the ISPN met at the ISPN general meeting and discussed how the ISPN can assist in ensuring a complete count of immigrants in the St. Louis Region. An RFP from the Missouri Foundation for Health was released to encourage local community-based organizations to assist with strategic outreach in hard-to-count communities.

  • In October 2019, an official committee regarding the census was founded. 

  • In December 2019 - January 2020, Emily Stuart stepped up to chair the ISPN Census Committee. 

  • In March 2020, members of the ISPN Census Committee/Immigrant Complete Count Committee hosted a Census Overview Webinar.

  • Between March-August 2020, the ISPN Census Committee/Immigrant Complete Count Committee began meeting biweekly to discuss program adaptations to ensuring an accurate count. 

Key deliverables of this committee include the following items:

  • Flyer distribution during regional food/supply drives

  • Robo-calls in multiple languages (IISTL)

  • Updates on census response rates and changes in operation

  • Outreach and in person assistance at low-response rate grocery stores

  • Inviting new partners to the table i.e. STLJuntos and MCU

  • Updating census messaging to intersect with race equity & COVID-19

  • Transitioning census messaging to include voter engagement work