PHILIPSBURG – On September 28, for the eighth consecutive year, the Rotary Club of St. Maarten distributed dictionaries to grade 3 students as part of their efforts to promote literacy.
The goal of The Dictionary Project is to assist all students in becoming good writers, active readers, creative thinkers, and resourceful learners by providing them with their own personal dictionary.
The dictionaries are a gift to each student to use at school and at home for years to come. Educators see third grade as the dividing line between learning to read and reading to learn. As such, the Rotary Club is proud to give dictionaries every year to children in grade 3 in 16 elementary schools on the island. Over the last 8 years, the Rotary Club has distributed over 5,000 books.
This is the local execution of a nationally recognized program. The Dictionary Project is dedicated to giving dictionaries to students to keep as their own personal reference books, in the belief that a dictionary is an essential tool for a quality education and that a student cannot do his or her best work without one. “We believe that a dictionary in the home serves as a resource for the whole family. It improves everyone’s vocabulary and it encourages children to learn more words,” a release said.
Community Project Chairman Kishore Idnani and his team will continue to focus during this Rotary year on literacy with additional projects along with the support of fellow Rotarians.
President Henna Budhrani would like to emphasize that all such projects involve contributions from the community and the Rotary club would like thank all their supporters and well-wishers.
“We would also like to thank Anish Chugani from Avantika who is a strong supporter of this project and has been donating the shipping cost every year. This is a wonderful example of different components of our community working together to benefit our children and their education. Also many thanks to past ADG Stephen Thompson for the lovely photographs and to all the Rotarian volunteers who gave their valuable time to distribute the dictionaries,” the statement concluded.
For more information about the Rotary Club of St. Maarten, contact the Rotary Club Press Officer at: pressrotarysxm@gmail.com or visit their website: www.rotarysxm.org.
