Thanks to one of several community projects facilitated by the Columbia Rotary Club, third-grade students at every school throughout Marion County receive a free dictionary each year.
The Columbia Rotary Club dictionary project was a vision of Rotarian Dr. Hugh Dickens eight years ago. The focus of the project was to distribute dictionaries to all students in the third grade in Columbia and Marion County.
The Rotary Club determined that, as a club, members would like to provide local children with a tool that could help them in their education. Thus, the dictionary was selected to serve as that tool.
Over the last eight years, the Rotary Club has donated more than 2,000 dictionaries to third-grade students throughout Columbia and Marion County.
Local Rotarians Gary Smyly, Cody Smith, Ben Stewart and Tom Porter distributed the dictionaries this week to classrooms around the county and presented background information to the students about the dictionary project, as well as the Rotary Club in general.
They explained to the students what it means to be a member of Rotary and the meaning behind the Rotary four-way test.
Besides the dictionary project, many of the students, teachers and faculty were unaware of the various other community projects and activities that Rotary promotes every year, such as awarding a $1,000 scholarship to a graduating senior from each local high school, sponsoring the city soccer program for children from age three and students through the seventh grade, as well as providing for needy families during the Christmas holiday season.
