When third grade students come to their schools after Labor Day this year, they will find members of the Secaucus Rotary Club waiting for them.
“The idea is to give each of them a dictionary,” said the local chapter’s president, Gerald L. Backus, at a recent Rotary breakfast at the Metro Diner on County Avenue.
The meeting included members of the Secaucus Rotary as well as Rotary members from Cedar Grove, where the project has been ongoing for several years.
“A dictionary is the first and most useful tool a child can own,” Cedar Grove Rotary Club President Bob Pityo in his short presentation that also included Secaucus Schools Superintendent Constantino Scerbo. The Rotary Club would distribute the books free in a ceremony at the schools, and the kids could have full ownership of their own book. They would use it in the classroom and bring it home.
“In most cases, this is the first time in many schools where each student has an individual dictionary at his or her desk,” Pityo said.
In Cedar Grove, school officials said students began to use the book as soon as they received it. The Rotarians picked third graders because they believe that is the age at which children begin to need it.
“The reaction was delightful,” Pityo said. “The students showed their appreciation with big smiles and hearty thanks. One would have thought they had each been given a box of candy.”
Pityo said that the reaction from students, parents, and school personnel was so positive that the club has decided to present dictionaries annually.
This gift is not without its benefit to the Rotary Club since the club’s name will be printed in every book and will make its way into the homes and hearts of each student, parent and teacher. This gift will also introduce the Rotary to a new generation and allow clubs like Secaucus an opportunity to undertake new youth-oriented services. This, according to Pityo, is something relatively new for the Rotary organization.
In giving out the dictionaries, Rotary members put the concept of the Rotary club in the students’ classrooms.
The Rotary Club is an organization of business and professional leaders dedicated to humanitarian service, seeking to encourage high ethical stardards in all vocations. Membership represents a cross-section of the community’s business and professional men and women.
“It is based on classification with a member from each profession,” Pityo said.
Rotarians develop community service projects that address many critical issues, such as children at risk, poverty and hunger, the environment, illiteracy, and violence. They also support programs for youth, educational opportunities and international exchanges for students, teachers, and other professionals, and vocational and career development. Although each chapter may have projects of their own, all are part of a worldwide effort to do away with polio.
Catherine Murray, a Secaucus real estate agent, said the Secaucus chapter would be distributing about 175 dictionaries at Clarendon, Huber Street and Immaculate Conception schools.