In January 2000, the Rotary Club of Santa Rosa, through its “Rotary Dictionaries for Kids” Project, raised $25,000 to purchase brand new MacMillan dictionaries to give to nearly 2,000 third grade children and their teachers in Santa Rosa. The Rotary club of Santa Rosa Foundation has delivered dictionaries to every third grade student at the Santa Rosa elementary schools every year since. Every January more than 60 Rotarians hand-deliver dictionaries to 30 elementary schools in Santa Rosa. Our goal is a simple one: we want to encourage children to be curious about learning and to help them incorporate reading into their lives.

From Actual emails in 2018

Parent of 3rdGrader: My daughter got a dictionary from your rotary so neat!

Rotary Treasurer: Thank you for the thought.  Our Club does about 1,800 dictionaries for 3rd graders.  Do you think the gift of a paper dictionary is appropriate in this day and age of everything being “on line”?

Parent of 3rd Grader: That’s a lot of dictionaries! And yes I do, she loved it and I think good for kids to know how to look up in one the old fashioned way. She had fun reading it and tagged pages on stuff that she thought was interesting. Definitely still appropriate.

Here are some pictures of 3rd graders at Schaefer Elementary School in Coffey Park receiving their dictionaries (2018)

 

Here is a video of the 3rd grade classes at Olivet Elementary receiving their dictionaries