It's in Our Hands

Today on the train...I sat next to a little boy. His brother and sister were sitting in front of him. None of them could have been older than 12 and yet they were riding the train from Long Beach to South LA, probably to a charter school in the area. Even though I think that it is scary for young children to ride the train by themselves, I give their parent(s) credit for trying to provide them with the best school possible. Long Beach has been known to be lacking in the education department. I actually just used a website called healthycity.org that gives details about all sorts of social services in California and the majority of schools in Long Beach had at least 75% of the children on free or reduced meals, which means that the students are mostly from low income families.

As the children got off of the train, I saw that the young boy that I was sitting next to had a Census 2010 bag. I hope those kids understand just how important they are in the count for the census. Children are the most under counted population country wide. If the kids are not accounted for  the state won't receive enough money to provide the services that kids need, like childcare, school, and health clinics.

To make matters worse, Los Angeles is the one of the hardest cities in the country to get an accurate count, and even harder this year because the state is in such terrible debt. Because of all these factors, my work  saw the need and contributed $1.23million to help Los Angeles work with the hardest to count populations so that the state can get the federal funding that it needs to provide services and support to all the amazing people that live here.