Rotary Central provides new library...

"Rotarians are conscious that children who fail to master the basic reading skills at an early age will fall further behind as they progress through school and that there has to be an extended range of reading and reference material to enable them to shine," said Mr. Wil Pineau, President of Rotary Central. Mr. Pineau explained that early in 2009 a school inspection reported that the achievement level of children at the Cayman Academy was below the level of expectation especially in READING, MATHEMATICS and LANGUAGE. The School Principal recognised the points made by the inspectors and pointed to the absence of a functional library as one of the reasons. Members of Rotary Central acted quickly to address this as a community issue; by working the Rotary Club of North Cobb, Georgia, USA and making an application for a Matching Grant funding through the Rotary Foundation in July 2009 for the building up of a book collection. "The American Library Association and the UK Library Association both recommend around 15 volumes per pupil in a school library as well as atlases and encyclopedias so we set out to achieve this level," explained Mr. Pineau. Rotarians and the School staff, along with the book supplier in the USA- Follett Library Resources of McHenry, Illinois identified an extensive list of titles covering diverse categories , novels, picture books, etc. As a result of this partnerships led by Rotary Central, the Cayman Academy was able to access books worth over US$27,453.00. "The journey of a 1000 miles begins with the first step and Rotary Central has helped us with our first step. We hope that in the years to come we will have many more books for our library and we really appreciate what Rotary Central has done for us," said Ms Nelda Dracket, Principal of Cayman Academy. Mr. Pineau thanked several Rotarians for their assistance in getting the project completed including Rotary Central Director Mr. Todd Davey, the International Service team led by Directors Susie Bayles and Graham Wood and Director Irene Simon in North Cobb. Of significance Mr. Pineau recognised the leading efforts of the late Fred Spiers, a past president of Rotary Central, who last year was instrumental in securing the Matching Grant to make the new library a reality and in wishing Cayman Academy much success with the library, he also asked the school to consider naming the library the "THE FRED SPEIRS LIBRARY"