Shelley's Report about the SMAS Census Ambassador Program

From left to right:
SMAS Ambassador Coordinator Stephanie Kriebel,
Ambassadors Shereen Lata, Edy Vasquez,
and Shirley Pinheiro
La Costa Adult School Assistant Director,
 and Shelley Cheng

Shelley Cheng is one of our San Mateo Adult School Census Ambassadors. Recently she shared a report about her work as a Census Ambassador with the San Mateo High School District School Board. Here, with her permission, is her report:

My name is Shelley Cheng, come from China. I am an ESL student and also one of the census ambassadors. 

Since I became part of the Census ambassador pilot training program, I learned what the census is, why it is important for everyone, and how people can participate.

One of the most important things I learned is how to communicate with different kinds of people who don’t know about Census or who are afraid to participate.

Our team set the census information table during break time at our school . We also visit classes both inside and outside of our school for expanding census information to as many people as possible. For example, we recently were invited by La Costa Adult School and talked with them about CENSUS, and their Assistant Director expressed the school would open the computer lab to facilitate the CENSUS participation of their students as long as they need. In the meantime, we convince them to pledge to participate and be counted. I would like to share another example, Some of our students were afraid of providing their contact information for pledge, so I asked them to think about why we can get the opportunity to study English for free at our school, think about where the money is from . Then I explained The money which is from state, county, and city government just based on how many people live here. Usually, This information is easy to convince them to pledge because they love and appreciate what our school has done for us.

I am so proud to be part of the Census ambassadors because I learned how this system works and especially what I can do to contribute and help my friends, my family, and my community become comfortable with participate in census.

Thank you to Shelley for sharing this report.  The SMAS Census Ambassador Team has now visited La Costa Adult School, Sequoia Adult School and South San Francisco Adult School.

Learn more about the San Mateo Adult School Census Ambassador Team in this interview featured on the US Citizenship Pod.

Are you interested in becoming a SMAS Census Ambassador? Would you like the Census Ambassador team to visit your school or organization?   Please contact Stephanie Kriebel at skriebel@smuhsd.org