Relief Through Leadership

Relief Through Leadership (RTL) was established a non-profit by Jim McKay Rotary Club of Antioch member, to provide some relief to Puerto Rico to recover from devastating Hurricanes in 2017.  Puerto Rico communities were already suffering from a depressed economy before incurring further challenges from natural disasters.  Jim asked for help from his career network and focused on education improvements in both service projects and providing refurbished chrome-books. In 2018 about twenty leaders in the Lake County Illinois School District spent a week during the summer cleaning and repairing Rafael de Jesus Elementary School.  RTL donated refurbished chrome-books to the school, and then three containers of classroom furniture donated from the Lake Forest Middle School.   

The ability to turn equipment into an effective tool takes training.  So, in 2019 over twenty US teachers and superintendents, business sponsors, and Rotarians, returned to Puerto Rico to train over 100 school teachers from across the Island on ways to create engaging classroom curriculums through using Chrome-books.  Over three hundred chrome-books had been donated by several schools in the Lake Country area, refurbished by D117 School District and Lake Country Tech Campus.   Some of the Chrome-book inventory and training has been donated to other organizations supporting education in Africa and Guatemala.

These refurbished Chrome-books continue to find new owners in need of such technology.  At the end of 2020, when people and goods were still not traveling to Puerto Rico due to the Covid-10 Pandemic, additional Chrome-books were provided to the Rotary Club of Elmhurst in Rotary District 6450 who shared with Onward House in Chicago as well as with ICDI (Interfaith Community for Detained Immigrants).  Donation of these chrome-books and some recipients are shown here.   Thanks for the Rotary Club of Antioch for their continued support of the partnership with Relief Through Leadership.