STATIN Grateful for UNFPA Support of ‘Census in School’ Tour

The Statistical Institute of Jamaica (STATIN) has expressed gratitude to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) for supporting the ‘Census in Schools’ programme tour, which concluded on Wednesday (November 30).

The UNFPA contributed US$15,000 to the initiative, which saw 14 primary and 14 secondary schools islandwide being visited.

STATIN’s Corporate Communications Manager, Georgia Garvey-Green, told JIS News that the UNFPA’s financial contribution enabled the Institute to achieve its objective of visiting the 28 schools targeted.

“We’re very happy for the assistance that we received from the UNFPA. The funding was able to help STATIN reach more students and have more schools being a part of the tour,” she said.

Mrs. Garvey-Green pointed out that by doing the school tour, STATIN was “better able to engage our students around the importance of the census and also to encourage them to tell their parents, family members and members of the community why it’s important that they should participate in the 2022 Population and Housing Census”.

Several activities were undertaken to engage students during the tour, which began in October.

“For the high-school students, we had drama that we performed with the census taker going to a household that is not so familiar with the census, and then the student or the child in the home would sensitise his or her parents,” Mrs. Garvey-Green explained.

She further indicated that students at the primary level were engaged through games as well as a child-friendly video outlining the importance of the census.

Activities at the secondary and primary levels were also designed to dispel myths that persons have about the census.

Meanwhile, Policy Programme Analyst, UNFPA Caribbean, André Richards, said it was a “great privilege” to partner with STATIN.

“We saw this as an important activity to contribute to, because we want young persons to get an understanding of what the census really is about. If we can get the buy-in that is needed in these important initiatives from children, we know that these children will bring the information back to their homes. So, when the census takers come around, their parents will be more aware and wanting to find out more about the census,” Mr. Richards said.

He noted, also, that STATIN has been a beneficiary of other types of support from the UNFPA, to aid in the execution of the 2022 census in Jamaica.

“Starting from 2019, we had a Caribbean initiative where we brought together all the statistical institutes in the region… and they had a workshop in which they would have gone through all the stages of the census implementation,” the Programme Analyst informed.

Additionally, he said that in 2020, the UNFPA provided STATIN with consultancy support, in which the consultant “went through [and] did a comprehensive review and revision of all the various census-related plans for this major undertaking”.

Mr. Richards indicated that as the population arm of the United Nations, the UNFPA always seeks to support initiatives like the census, which allows countries to capture data on the citizenry.

Jamaica’s Housing and Population Census is conducted once every 10 years. Data collection is currently under way for 15th edition.