(CARICOM Secretariat)    TEN Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Member States and Associate Members are undertaking enumeration activities this year as the region continues to conduct the 2010 Round of Population and Housing Census.

St. Vincent and the Grenadines began its enumeration yesterday, while Suriname is scheduled to start its activities in August. Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, Dominica, St. Kitts and Nevis, Grenada, Montserrat, Anguilla and Antigua and Barbuda began their activities earlier in the year.

The Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Saint Lucia, British Virgin Islands, Bermuda and the Cayman Islands began census activities last year. They are actively processing their data and in some cases, have already disseminated some preliminary results.

Against the background of the acknowledged need for countries to produce high quality census results in a timely manner for a variety of users, the CARICOM Secretariat is approaching its development partners to secure funding to assist in the process of census data analysis to enable greater use of the census results.
For the 2010 Round of Population and Housing Census, CARICOM has taken a regionally-coordinated approach and there are common elements in the questionnaires.
The 2010 Regional Strategy of the support for the 2010 census was approved by the Community Council of Ministers in 2009. Harmonised training in various census activities such as methodologies, data processing and dissemination are also part of the regional strategy to have a common approach on the conduct of the censuses. Support was provided through the services of a consultant to enable the countries to prepare their maps and to strengthen capacity in geographic information systems which will be useful in the dissemination of the census results by area.

Oversight of the regional census strategy rests with the Standing Committee of Caribbean Statisticians (SCCS), which comprises the Directors of Statistics/Chief Statisticians, census officers, and regional and international organisations.
The regional census strategy has received funds from a number of sources which include:
(i)                The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) for a project under the approach of the Common Census Framework Project;
(ii)             The Department for International Development has provided funds to support activities under the common census framework. Areas of support include preparation of census mapping, conduct of training workshops and census data processing;
(iii)           The United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD) has also supported the 2010 round of censuses through the conduct of a regional workshop in 2007 on Census Management and Training – Mapping and Geographic Information Systems. The UNSD has promised further support through convening or assisting with the facilitation of training workshops.
(iv)           UNFPA has funded training workshop on Census Data Capture and a meeting of census experts to discuss experiences of the 2000 round as it can provide lessons learned/best practices for the 2010 round and has also provided support to the training of enumerators and supervisors in member states and associate members.

The Regional Census Coordinating Committee (RCCC), which reports to the SCCS, undertakes the actual monitoring of the progress of countries undertaking their census activities. Monitoring includes engaging in deliberations on common problems, developing strategies that can assist countries and making recommendations to enable support for the conduct of the censuses in the countries.

Population and housing censuses are conducted every ten years. Seventy countries were scheduled to conduct censuses in 2010 and another 60 are to conduct theirs this year, covering some three billion people.

By 2014, the majority of the world’s population should be counted.