We love what Savannah mom of three Carmen Vazquez is doing to help her island of Puerto Rico.
Carmen has teamed with Keller Williams Realty Coastal Area Partners in Savannah to provide a way to directly help Puerto Rico, where nearly 90 percent of the island is still without power three weeks after Hurricane Maria made landfall there.
You can help, too, by donating to Puerto Rico Youth at Risk, Inc., PRYAR (Jóvenes de Puerto Rico en Riesgo, Inc.), a private non-profit organization that has worked in PR since 1996, designing and implementing programs geared to youth at risk. Carmen’s been involved with PRYAR since its inception in 1996.
100% of all donated funds will go to PRYAR. That means your money will not go towards overhead, administration and red tape, but will directly help support people in PR who are dealing with losses.
Donate via GoFundMe here. You will receive a receipt for tax purposes.
Here’s the PRYAR action plan to concentrate on relief efforts to all residents of the communities they serve. Most of these communities concentrate around where the eye made landfall. Each school served by their programs has a tutoring center managed by PRYAR. These centers will become their operation center for each community.
•They will offer services in the communities instead of expecting residents to move to San Juan to access services.
•Most of these schools are currently used as refugee centers for people who have lost their homes. They will open their doors to all of them and become an extra resource for the mayor of those municipalities in supporting them to access FEMA services and governmental support.
•They will visit and access all 359 families they currently serve to determine the needs for each family and youth. They will offer psychological services to these families.
•They will create support groups at each school through their licensed staff to help residents cope with loss, learn resiliency and healthy recovery, deal with this crisis and help them manage the emotional effects of this event in an empowering way.
•They will recruit their Youth Leadership Program (Orden del Manicato) to help with cleanup efforts and be available for community support in rebuilding. As power and internet are restored to each center, they will be available for residents to have access to computer services.
•As schools start providing educational services again the organization and its tutors will be available to serve the Department of Education as needed in the process of reintegrating the students and catching up with loss of instructional time. .
Donate via GoFundMe here. You will receive a receipt for tax purposes.
