Honoring Community Leaders

On May 27th Riis Settlement celebrated 10 phenomenal community leaders who led the organization’s campaign to increase our neighborhood’s participation rate in the 2010 nationwide census.  Their hard work doing community outreach during the past three months paid off and the Long Island City/Queensbridge/Ravenswood area improved its participation rate by a full 6 points, 61.3% in 2010 up from 55.3% in the 2000 census. 

Census leaders Cristóbal Arpi, Debendra Bhandari, Jenny Carrera, Laura Conforme, Patricia Garcia Colmenares, Maria Monttedoro, Ysabel Mejia, Mary Salazar, Francis Stephen and Sumale Thongsongkrid each earned an honorary award and will soon receive a $500 gift card in honor of their commitment.

The celebration included speeches by Modesto Romero and José Acosta, Partnership Specialists from the U.S. Census Bureau; Kacper Jarecki, Assistant Manager of the Queens Library at Long Island City; and Marion Jeffries, President of the NAACP Western Queens Branch.  Another local partner, the Queens Complete Count Committee, organized by Queens Borough President Helen Marshall, was invaluable in making this a successful campaign.

Presentations by two census leaders highlighted valuable skills learned during participation in the census campaign.  Maria Mattedoro explained, “The first thing we felt was a lot of people were afraid of returning their form.  It was our responsibility to explain to them the importance of the census; that there was no reason for them to be afraid; that it was completely confidential and the information is sealed for 72 years.”

She added, “We learned to engage in a new way in the community…We were able to resolve questions and solve problems…Our work has yielded very good results, especially in the Latino community where people felt afraid to participate.  Thank you for giving us this opportunity to get closer to the community and be able to learn, while being useful.”

Census leader Jenny Carrera added, “For me it was a grandiose experience sharing with so many people from different cultures, and above all, to clear up all of the doubts and fears that people had about the 2010 census.”  Maria agreed, “We worked in groups of three and no one worked alone.  We became friends and we worked happily [together].

The Census Leaders did a phenomenal job and learned many valuable skills over the past few months – they were confident, humble and rightfully proud of their accomplishments.  We thank everyone who helped make the census celebration, and the campaign, a success.  It was a touching event that highlighted the power of each and every one of us to create change and make connections in our communities.