Those non profit groups have been busy handing out survey sheets with QR codes at various events — soccer tournaments, El Día de Los Muertos festival, and Fiesta Evansville.
The goal is to for the first time, create a thorough picture of the entire migrant community in the Evansville area — the Migrant Needs and Opportunities Survey, branded as the Connecting Cultures Survey.
It can be taken online and is in English, Spanish, Haitian Creole and Ukrainian.
While more common in larger cities, Abraham Brown from Hola Evansville, said it’s been about 15 years since any such assessment has been done locally.
And again, they want to be thorough. Previously, Hola Evansville spearheaded the Latino Needs Assessment, but this will be much broader.
“We know while the Latino community, Haitian and Marshallese migrants make up one of the biggest numbers in our international community; we didn't want to forget that they were a lot of community from India, community from other Pacific Islands,” Brown said. “And so we want to make sure that we capture a very, very good picture of how the migrant community is making an impact here in Evansville, Indiana.”
Ely Sena-Martin is chair of the Immigrant Welcome and Resource Center. She said they’re seeing more Venezuelans and Haitians coming, and they’re sometimes underemployed.
“So they were professionals, and they have assets in terms of professional experience, educational experience, that they may not be able to quickly turn into workforce jobs as they are, because it happened in another country.”
One goal of the survey is to connect employers with programs to help migrants bring their skills to bear.
Sydney Hardgrave is Regional Director of Community Engagement and Impact, Vanderburgh and Warrick County Community Foundation. Using funds from the Eli Lilly Foundation, they’re funding the study which is carried out by Black Onyx Management Group.
She said the resulting data should be a tool for the business and non-profit sectors and others.
“…current and accurate data about the immigration trends here in our community, and can use that for their planning purposes to ensure that they're also meeting the needs of those groups in their roles or services.”
They’d like to get surveys from one thousand individuals. The surveys are online and open until the end of November.