March is Literacy Month
Aloha Energizers!
March is literacy month in Rotary. Most of you take for granted the fact that you can read this sentence but literacy is not universal either in the United States or in the world. Currently fourteen percent of adults in the USA cannot read while twenty-one percent read below the fifth grade level. World wide over seven hundred million adults are illiterate, sixty-six percent of whom are female.
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Rotary has long been a champion of literacy and many clubs use their annual Foundation allotments to buy dictionaries for third graders including most clubs in Hawai’i. Read aloud programs to encourage literacy are also very prevalent both in the USA and in other countries. The Andy and Elmer’s Rotary Literacy Project has been developed to promote the Four Way test and reading in general among young children and is being used in our district.
Recently there has been more emphasis on adult literacy facilitated by modern teaching methods including the use of electronic note pads. District 5000 has been approached about this type of learning and will be participating in an initiative launched by a Rotary scholar in New Zealand. Information about other Rotary literacy projects world wide for both adults and children is available in the publication Literacy Project Guide available for download on the Rotary International website.
Mark Twain once wrote: “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow mindedness..”
The same can be said of literacy which is the key to opening the door to the vast universe of ideas, persons and places that leads to greater understanding and acceptance of the differences and similarities among the peoples of the world.
Phil Sammer
Governor, District 5000