Brattleboro Rotary Club's Pine Ridge Reservation in ROTARIAN MAGAZINE
For the past two years, the Rotary Clubs of Brattleboro have been engaged in an international project in the United States.
After learning about the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, through an investigative report on ABC’s 20/20 TV show, the Clubs decided to direct attention towards helping improve the lives of the residents in Pine Ridge.
The November, 2014 issue of ROTARIAN MAGAZINE, the official publication of Rotary International, with a circulation of close to 1/2 billion, recognized the project in its "World Round Up" section
The Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, home of the Lakota Sioux, covers more than 2.8 million acres in southwestern South Dakota, making it the second-largest reservation in the United States and larger than Delaware and Rhode Island combined. However, is one of the poorest areas in the U.S.
The club’s annual International Film and Food Festival has so far raised over $7,000 to upgrade equipment for KILI Radio, a vital communications channel on the reservation.
Additionally, it has sent laptops to students and other residents at Pine Ridge.
According to Martin Cohn, Brattleboro Rotary Club Immediate Past President, the club collects old and broken laptops and sends them for repair to Sam Jones, a fellow Rotarian in Burlington, Vermont, who owns a computer business, Computers for Change.
“Sam wipes the computers clean of information, salvages the usable components, and builds the laptops from the parts,” Cohn explained, “The refurbished laptops have the latest operating systems, word-processing software and are Internet-capable.”
Cohn said, “Working with Sunrise Rotary Club, we have collected close to 150 old laptops enabling us to ship over 85 refurbished laptops to Pine Ridge.”
The Brattleboro Rotary Club, founded in 1950, is an active community service club of over 75 members who engage in community and human service projects locally and internationally.
If you are interested in learning more about the Brattleboro Rotary Club’s work with Pine Ridge Reservation or to donate an old laptop, visit the Brattleboro Rotary Club Web site at brattlebororotaryclub.org.
You can read an article about the project by the Brattleboro Reformer by clicking here.