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Read MoreTinley Park-Frankfort Rotary donates 336 dictionaries
Thanks to a donation by the Tinley Park-Frankfort Rotary, third-graders in Harvey School District 152 will have a resource tool of their own to turn to when looking up word spellings, facts about the planets or maps of the seven continents.
The Tinley Park-Frankfort Rotary Club recently donated dictionaries to every third-grader in the district as well as students at Ralph J. Bunche School in Hazel Crest. The service club, which has been handing out dictionaries to students for the past six years, has donated more than 1,500 books to date.
The dictionaries are so multi-faceted, with sections about weights and measurements, biographies of the U.S. presidents and copies of the Declaration of Independence and U.S. Constitution, that Rotarians decided to donate a collection to English Language Learners (ELL) and English as Second Language (ESL) students at Andrew High School as well.
A similar donation has been made to ELL students at Lincoln-Way North, Lincoln-Way East and Tinley Park high schools in the past.
“It is our pleasure to present these dictionaries to students so that they can discover new words and always have a resource tool at hand when completing homework assignments,” said Tinley Park-Frankfort Rotarian Steve Purucker who organizes the dictionary project each year.
“Literacy has always been an important issue for Rotary International,” added Rotarian Karen Wegrzyn. “At the local level, this project allows us to make an impact on those who live right here in our own back yard.”
The club, which is comprised of business and community leaders from Frankfort and Tinley Park, is part of a worldwide organization that participates in a broad range of humanitarian, intercultural and educational activities designed to improve the human condition locally, nationally and globally.
It routinely raises money for victims of domestic violence, collects paper goods for the Frankfort and Tinley Park food pantries, and provides scholarships to graduating high school seniors from Andrew, Tinley Park, Lincoln-Way East and Lincoln-Way North high schools.
This is the sixth year the club has donated dictionaries to the Harvey School District and the third year it has donated dictionaries to students who are learning English as a second language. Students at Ralph J. Bunche School in Hazel Crest have benefitted from the dictionary project the last two years.
In this photo, Tinley Park-Frankfort Rotary Club members get ready to deliver dictionaries to students in Harvey School District 152 and Ralph J. Bunche School in Hazel Crest.