Quad Cities will have free dictionaries from Rotary

The Rotary Club has been partnering for eight years to provide more than 2,500 dictionaries to local elementary schools in the Virginia, Eveleth-Gilbert and Mountain Iron-Buhl school districts, along with Marquette School in Virginia.

Rotary Club members had reached out to teachers in the area to see if dictionaries are still relevant.

“There was a resounding ‘YES,” the Rotary Club said in a news release.

While most schools have computers, teachers said there is still a need for the dictionaries to teach skills like alphabetizing, spelling, the meaning of words and composition.

“So we agreed to pair up with The Dictionary Project to provide dictionaries to each of our local third graders — sometimes the student’s very first book to take home and keep forever,” said the Rotary Club release.

Why third grade?

Children ages 8 to 9 read to learn, whereas up to that time, they have been learning to read, the statement said.

The Dictionary Project is a 501 C-3 nonprofit organization that has distributed 26 million dictionaries globaly — 1.6 million this year alone.

The project’s history goes back to 1992, when Annie Plummer of Savannah, Ga., gave 50 dictionaries to third graders at a local school. She received such positive feedback that she decided to pass 17,000 dictionaries out to all of the schools in the area.

Word spread of the venture, and a couple in 1995 would soon form a non-profit that is now The Dictionary Project.

The original mission was to get dictionaries in the hands of each and every third grader in South Carolina. That goal was reached in 1999.

The Wall Street Journal published an article about the project in March of 2002 and it mushroomed, with a goal of providing a dictionary for every third grader in the United States.

Service clubs like the Rotary were contacted to purchase and distribute the books. Dictionaries through the program are now handed out in all 50 states and 16 countries.

The dictionaries also contain information on weights and measures, science elements, the Constitution, sign language, the world, countries, states, presidents, planets and more.

Rotary is an international organization of business and professional leaders who provide humanitarian service to build good will and peace. There are about 1.2 million Rotarians in more than 200 countries.

The Virginia Rotary Club has 50 members. Other programs of the Virginia Rotary Club include the Kid’s Fishing Contest on Silver Lake in Virginia each June; the ODC Bowling event for disabled adults each fall; and a meal at the Salvation Army Supper Club each month.