Members of Rotary Club of Fort Myers South were hard at work this past weekend preparing dictionaries for distribution to third grade students in Lee County. Each year, all of the rotary clubs in Lee County provide every third grade student in Lee County schools with a dictionary.
This year, Rotary Club of Fort Myers South was assigned Colonial Elementary, Heights Elementary, Orangewood Elementary, Ray Pottorf Elementary, Tanglewood Elementary, and Treeline Elementary. Before the dictionaries are distributed to students, volunteers uncase the dictionaries, apply Rotary 4-Way Test labels, re-case the dictionaries, label the boxes for the destination schools and place them on pallets.
“This year we had so many helpers that we finished the project in record time! We started a little after 9 a.m. and by 9:45, we had labeled and cased almost 1,000 dictionaries,” says Jim Applegate, dictionary project chairman for Rotary Club of Fort Myers South. “After we were done with ours, the children volunteers pitched in to help another club who was short-handed. It was a great team effort,” he adds.
The dictionaries will be distributed to schools on Friday, October 4th, where Rotarians will give a brief introduction to Rotary before handing the dictionaries to third graders. New to this year, Rotary will also be distributing dictionaries to second and third grade teachers.
“I have been told by some of the teachers that for some students this is the first book they have ever owned. It is a joy to see the excitement on their faces when we hand them their very own dictionary,” Applegate states.
About Fort Myers South Rotary
Fort Myers South Rotary is part of the Fort Myers community located in tropical southwest Florida on the shore of the Gulf of Mexico. We invite you to visit our site for information about our club and all our activities. Meetings are held each Monday at 12:00 PM at the Bell Crowne Plaza Select located at 13051 Bell Tower Drive. Visit our website at http://www.rotarysouthftmyers.
