Club Literacy Projects Key Focus for 2009-2010
Gallipolis Rotary Club kicked off Literacy Month with a Literacy program provided by Literacy Committee members, Debbie Saunders and Emily Dailey. Members learned that literacy is more than just being able to read and write but a continuum of education that is life long. Statistics from RI document that there are over 800 million people over the age of 15 throughout the world who are illiterate. Girls and women comprise nearly 64% of this statistic. Rotary’s world wide efforts, including local efforts by Gallipolis Rotary are focused on attacking this problem. Our own, Operation We Care medical mission to the Philippines has its own grant to improve literacy through donations of books and nutrition assistance to schools.
Gallipolis Rotary has provided over 2,000 dictionaries to the 5th graders in Gallia County over the past years. Our other projects include Books For Schools, which donates new books to area elementary schools in the of names of speakers at our weekly meetings. Our club utilizes a Rotary District Simplified Grant to help pay for part of this project along with local club funds. Finally, Gallipolis Rotarians read monthly in Gallia County Local elementary first grade classrooms. Members read from books donated from Bossard Memorial Library as well as books purchased and donated by Rotarians.
Debbie Saunders, reported on a local Rotary club project where our club along with the Emblem Club and other local individuals raised over $4,000 to purchase reference books to stock the newly constructed high schools in our county. These great ‘brick and mortar’ jobs often leave the school libraries without sufficient reference texts.
Emily Dailey added that Gallipolis Rotary’s efforts have been aided by programs from the Educational Service Center (ESC) and Gallia Local’s LEADS program where books are reaching student’s homes where before no reading materials were available. President Bonnie McFarland emphasized that often Gallipolis Rotary does not always get credit for the efforts that have been made over the years. She and Debbie Saunders are increasing the community PR to highlight our club’s efforts.
Jodie McCalla reminded club members that the Gallipolis Rotary Club has provided scholarship awards for 39 years in our community to worthy college bound high school seniors. Thanks to Jodie’s efforts this year, the scholarship application is now online and she is using social networking technologies such as Facebook to get the word out to interested students.
Jim Morrison emphasized that our own Bossard Library has felt the downturn in the economy and has had to reduce its operating hours down to 48 hours per week. This means there are only two evenings a week when local students can have access to the library’s substantial resources for homework and research. This is an important resource for our community, and the library needs our help.
President Bonnie McFarland welcomed everyone to the meeting today including our visiting Rotarian, Jack Buxton, from the Pt. Pleasant Rotary Club. Kevin Petrie provided our invocation.
Rotary Reading—Project Chair, Emily Dailey, reminded members that TOMORROW is our monthly reading day in the first grade classes. Emily needs one volunteer yet for Addison Elementary. There are plenty of books and labels.
District Conference—President Bonnie reminded members that this year’s District Conference will be held May 13-16 in Athens at the Ohio University Inn and Conference Center. Reservations may be made on-line at: http://www.district6690.org/index.php?id=13136.
Split-The Pot—Dan Whiteley ran STP for our meeting and our small pot was $7. Dan asked Chris Marazon to pull the winning ticket which was held by Jim Morrison! Jim carefully counted his winnings and drew the five of hearts missing the big one of $110. The Foundation Fine was assessed against anyone who has NOT check out a book in the last two weeks from Bossard Library.
Fellowship—Gordon Amsbary ran club fellowship starting out with a little agricultural humor followed by an IRS joke from the Pt. Pleasant club. Gordo provided a little Broadway trivia, a Nordic countries quiz, and finished off with a few words of wisdom.
Club Board Meeting followed our meeting today.