Tell me a story! Anyone who has ever read to a child knows the inherent power of storytelling. In fact, as Rotarians, we read to schoolchildren because we know the impact reading and storytelling has on a child’s likelihood of academic success. Besides that, storytelling is fun. As we close out September, with its focus on supporting education for children and literacy for all, let’s take a moment tell some true stories about Rotarians around the world.
First, you all received an email from Jim Hunt today about the Guatemala Literacy Project (GLP) and trips that he’s organizing to Guatemala in the coming year. More than 600 clubs and 80 districts have been working together since 1997 to improve education for underserved students in Guatemala through the GLP. In that time, 208,500 students have been served through four programs. The GLP began 20 years ago, setting up computer labs and supplying textbooks for middle school students in the western and central highlands. It has evolved to center on teacher mentoring.
Another program that focuses on teacher mentoring is Nepal Teacher Training Innovations (NTTI). Like, the GLP, NTTI grew from the insight that before students can succeed, the quality of the teaching in that classroom needs to improve. Rotary, the United Nations, USAID, and other organizations are shifting their focus to helping teachers plan lessons that ensure students will actually learn. The entire effort is part of a larger goal to reduce extreme poverty, because knowing how to read and write increases a person’s earning potential and ability to build a better life.
Rotarians are also behind less ambitious but still deeply impactful literacy projects. For example, in Buena Park, California, the Rotary Club distributed cloth drawstring bags with a detailed parenting reference book for the parent plus a board book for the child to local hospitals where the bags are given to parents of newborns. The emphasis is on helping parents to realize how important it is to verbalize and read to their child from Day One.
The Book Doctor Program, an organization within Rotary, repairs and cleans up donated books to be distributed to needed Rotarian operated sites in Southern Africa, India, and areas of the world that are desperately in need of the printed word for schools and libraries. The books are then shipped in containers which are themselves also donated to libraries, classrooms, or clinics.
The Rotary Club of Nassau Sunrise in the Bahamas named their literacy program “Get Fit with Lit.” This program is "a multi-faceted approach to raising awareness of the need to cultivate a literate population in order to support their nation’s growth and development." Rotarians partnered with local schools and organizations to implement awareness and intervention programs. Rotarians provide books, technology, and mentoring to improve students’ reading achievement. The club’s collaboration with Toastmasters led to an annual public speaking event for Interactors (reinforcing that literacy includes reading, writing and speaking skills). Public events such as Reading in the Mall encourage parents to develop strategies to support their child’s literacy development.
Many Rotary Clubs, including several in the Pikes Peak region, present dictionaries to children in the third grade at local elementary schools. Third grade is the year students "make the transition from learning to read to reading to learn." Children use their own dictionaries to develop their writing and reading skills and become resourceful learners. The Rotary Club of the Broadmoor District just purchased more than $9,000 worth of dictionaries for D12 students.
The throughline for all these projects is our shared belief that the need for quality literacy and education programs affects every community. Rotary members can and do play a vital role to strengthen the capacity of communities to support education. In our own club, we support D11 directly through Flight grants to specific STEAM projects. However, many of our other projects are support education and literacy. We support basic arts literacy through our Philharmonic project. We promote science literacy through the Planet Walk. We read to children. We provide recognition to outstanding teachers. We support D11 families through our partnership with Cougar Cares.
As we change our focus from supporting education and literacy (September's theme) to economic and community development (October's theme), pause a moment to think about how those two efforts connect to each other. And then get out there and tell YOUR story through service in Rotary.
