Tech Donations Strengthen Substance-Abuse Awareness Program
Faced with the enormous tragedy of losing his son to a prescription drug overdose, Scott DePuy started Ryan's Solution Foundation. The foundation's mission is to generate awareness of prescription drug addiction and to spare families the same fate the DePuy family suffered.
The foundation generates awareness of this problem through presentations and interactive discussions for both youth and parents in local schools. With substance abuse programs being cut due to tightened school budgets, the foundation's work has become more critical than ever.
However, the two-person volunteer-run foundation was faced with budgetary and information technology hurdles that kept it from providing more programming. The foundation's computers ran different versions of PowerPoint software; this made updating presentation materials difficult, but purchasing updated software was prohibitively expensive.
Fortunately, after contacting TechSoup, the foundation received donations of Microsoft Office software, which contained the much-needed PowerPoint in addition to Word, Outlook, Publisher, and more. Now equipped with the latest software, the foundation can keep its presentations up-to-date with the latest statistics regarding prescription drug abuse and work closely with substance abuse interventionists. Help from TechSoup and Microsoft has strengthened the organization's resolve to expand its work to more school districts.
