Pledge: President Keith Wescovich
Prayer: Carroll Bowser
Song: Bill McLauglin
Brents Card Game Winner: David Wight
Sergeants Report: Lee David
Raffle Winners: David Wight, John Donnelly, Sandy Taylor
Happy Bucks: Bill Suits for his 53rd Anniversary, he gave his secrets to a successful marriage
Announcements:
Bill O'Shaughnessy: Saturday, Nov. 7 is Rotary's observance of United Nations Day
Keith: The scholarship committee is in need of members to replace Shirley Von Dassel and Stan Niemerski. Please contact the scholarship committee chair, Ron Scott
Keith: Took an unofficial poll of the club to determine if we wish to pay for the cost of shipping donated clothing to Appalachia. The club overwhelmingly voted yes. Keith will propose that funds be allocated at the next board meeting and the club will take an offficial vote to approve the expenditure.
There will be a candidates (OS First Selectman) forum on Tuesday Oct. 6 at the Pavilion from 7:30 to 9pm.
Marty: We have chosen Friday, Nov. 20 as the date of our Wine Tasting. Marty will have tickets shortly to distribute to the club for sale.
Program: John Donnelly introduced our speaker Betsy and Dianna Sisson of the International Reading Association (IRA)
Here are some statistics:
Nationally, 42 million adults cannot read
50 million adults read at a 4th grade level
1/4 of teenage students drop out of high school
1/4 of teenage students who graduate has an equivelent of an 8th grade education
85% of kids who go to Juvenile Court are functionally illiterate
70% of inmates read at a 4th grade level
There are 4 billion illiterate people in the world
Reading is important to learn at an early age because 2/3 of students who cannot read after 4th grade end up in jail. What can we do? The IRA has 350,000 educators in 100 countries. RI and the IRA have teamed up to develop community based programs that support literacy. Betsy showed a resource handbook that outlined goals. In a given community, you must determine needs & resources, promote donations and education awareness, promote literacy events, volunteer assessment including literacy projects already underway. Projects include, adopting a school, book/supply drives, dictionary projects and international book drives. Education awareness starts by identifying at rish children. Programs to promote literacy include Books for Newborns, computer assisted solutions, English as a second language, Readers make Leaders, The Four-Way Speech Test, International Literacy Day/Month and Read Across America Day and Teach Recognition Events.
Rotarians have taken part by being readers and story tellers. Clubs can incorporate literacy in some of their service projects such as safe drinking water and a pototo project which was done.
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