Jose Vera, LA5 Rotary Club, is a Co-Chair (with Albert Hernandez, Burbank Rotary Club) of the District 5280 Puerto Rico Humanitarian Trip, April 14-18, 2022. He spoke to us by Zoom about the 12 projects with Puerto Rico’s District 7000. The 61 Clubs in our District need to raise over $100,000 to combine with Rotary Global Matching Grants. Over 120 Rotarians from our District are expected to go.
Our DG Guity Javid has noted that Puerto Rico is still in a humanitarian crisis with the aftermath of Hurricane María in Sept 2017, when 95% of the people lost their electricity and half lost access to running water; 3 months later 45% (1.5 million people) still had no electric power. Then 3 powerful earthquakes hit in Jan 2020, followed by the COVID pandemic.
Among our planned projects are an agricultural training program at a homeless shelter, a recycling center to fund addict treatment, a sewing training project for underserved women, a Rotary Peace Park to be maintained by local Clubs, retrofitting a used 40-foot container for physical & ocupational therapy services for disabled students, computer training for students & parents, a sports training facility for troubled children, a secure school for domestic violence victims, a school photocopying center, furnishings for a children’s shelter, and playground equipment to replace hurricane-destroyed equipment.