At the end of the school year, children have to return the laptops they were issued by their school. For homeless and low-income youth, the return of these laptops means a loss of connection to the outside world since most group activities and educational opportunities will only be available online for the near future. We anticipate social distancing will cause access to computers at The Cloud (a safe and fun place for youth ages 12-19 years old to hang out in Sitka) and at our public library to be severely limited, if not non-existent.
Youth Advocates of Sitka serves the homeless and low-income youth population in Sitka, and expressed a need for this hardware at one of our club meetings. Our club members voted on this as a project to use district grant funds for; and, our members would participate by writing letters to those who get to use the computers about what educational websites they particularly enjoy. We would buy the laptops and give them with our letters to Youth Advocates to distribute as soon as the district grant funds are made available. Our budget is based on an estimate for 10 laptops that we received from our local computer store.
The Sitka Rotary Club is making two district grant applications this year. Of those two, this application is our highest priority.
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