ROUNDTABLE BOOKS Reception to benefit UNESCO World Book day

Winnetka Bookshop Roundtable Books and Author ArLynn Presser are pleased to announce an upcoming reception on Saturday, April 28: FROM GUTENBERG TO ZUCKERBERG: a literacy project to benefit UNESCO'S 15TH ANNUAL World Book Day and nudge ArLynn to finish her latest book, FACE TO FACEBOOK See www.ArlynnPresser.com Rountable Books located at 572 Lincoln Avenue, Winnetka, IL 5-8 PM Appetizers generously donated by Grand Food Center Cost of admission is one or more new or gently used children's books

April 28 five to eight p.m. 572 Lincoln Avenue, Winnetka, IL For more information: http://roundtablebooks.com/about.asp

Helping others affected by Japan's earthquake and Tsunami helps our children learn empathy

By now, you've probably read about Japan's earthquake and Tsunami. here's a link to Reuters for information and updates: http://t.co/AF54dZe

If you want to help family members read about Japan's earthquake and tsunami, here's a link on Wikipedia: http://tinyurl.com/6bonbbm

If you want to help the Rotary Foundation with earthquake/tsunami relief, here's a link: http://t.co/6yzMgU2

Helping our children learn age-appropriate information by reading about earthquakes and tsunamis can help them master the fear that such disasters can cause by focusing on the science of nature. By reading to their children, parents can also monitor whether children are becoming overwhelmed or fearful with too much information.

In contrast, seeing disasters unfold repeatedly on television and the Internet can be too intense for some children, causing nightmares and other fears that may linger for months.

Having your children work with you while you help others teaches them empathy, which they need in order to grow up to understand the importance of the Four-Way Test. What can you do to help?

Sept 23 Guest bartending event for OPERATION WARM COATS

OPERATION WARM Coats for Children Guest Bartending

Chair: Richard (Rich) Lalley
Date: Sep 23, 2010 at 5:00 PM - Sep 23, 2010 at 7:00 PM

Location: Little Ricky's Rib Joint
540 Lincoln Avenue, Winnetka

Help us raise funds for our Operation Warm project by enjoying fellowship at a happy hour with Rotary Guest Bartenders. All tips will support our plans to provide new winter coats to children served by Chicago Commons and Youth Services of Glenview-Northbrook. Each $20 tip will provide a child with a new winter coat!

Can't come? Support the project through PayPal at Http://WNRotary.org

Winnetka Rotary fundraiser for Winnetka Library Summer Project

Winnetka-Northfield Rotary president Rich Lalley announced a community collaboration with the local library where we inspire our children to delve into summer reading while raising funds for the benefit of Reach Out and Read Illinois:

The Winnetka-Northfield Library District is pleased to work with the Rotary Club of Winnetka-Northfield this summer for the benefit of Reach Out & Read Illinois. Rotarians help by sponsoring young readers!

Reach Out & Read provides children's books to pediatricians who serve families in low income communities, to encourage parents and caregivers to read to their children and to increase literacy rates.

The children of our communities who will participate in this year's Summer Reading Program -- Be a Reading Superhero! -- and who choose to sign up for this special program will help to raise money for this worthy cause. Hundreds of children sign up for Summer Reading each year and thousands of books are read.

So, where do Rotarians, parents, and community members, come in?

Please let library director David Seleb or Youth Services know (at 847-446-7220) if you are interested in being a reading sponsor. You may choose to donate a certain amount of money for a certain number of books read by our children. For instance, .10 for the first 500 total books read. In that case, you donation would be $50.00. This would encourage our children to read more throughout the summer.

Or, you may simply donate a set amount of your choosing to the program. Either way, our children will know that they can make a difference in the lives of less fortunate children just by reading.

Our staff will produce a video with some of the participating children who will talk about their experiences with the program and their desire to help. We will show this video at a Rotary Club program in the fall and invite some of the children and their family members to attend to talk about their participation and to thank the Rotary Club members.

Please send David Seleb a message if you are interested in being a sponsor with details of how you would like to donate. If you have any questions about the program, please contact him at 847-446-7220 or at david@winnetkalibrary.org.

Thanks for being a reading superhero!

What is Reach Out and Read? Here's a quote from their organization's site

About Us

Reach Out and Read (ROR) is an evidence-based nonprofit organization that promotes early literacy and school readiness in pediatric exam rooms nationwide by giving new books to children and advice to parents about the importance of reading aloud.

ROR builds on the unique relationship between parents and medical providers to develop critical early reading skills in children, beginning at 6 months of age. The 3.9 million families served annually by ROR read together more often, and their children enter kindergarten better prepared to succeed, with larger vocabularies and stronger language skills.

Our Mission

Reach Out and Read prepares America's youngest children to succeed in school by partnering with doctors to prescribe books and encourage families to read together.

Doctors, nurse practitioners, and other medical professionals incorporate Reach Out and Read's evidence-based model into regular pediatric checkups, by advising parents about the importance of reading aloud and giving developmentally-appropriate books to children. The program begins at the 6-month checkup and continues through age 5, with a special emphasis on children growing up in low-income communities. Families served by Reach Out and Read read together more often, and their children enter kindergarten with larger vocabularies and stronger language skills, better prepared to achieve their potential.

The Reach Out and Read Model

Pediatric healthcare providers (including pediatricians, family physicians, and pediatric nurse practitioners) are trained in the three-part ROR model to promote early literacy and school readiness:

* In the exam room, doctors and nurses speak with parents about the importance of reading aloud to their young children every day, and offer age-appropriate tips and encouragement.
* The pediatric primary care provider gives every child 6 months through 5 years old a new, developmentally-appropriate children's book to take home and keep.
* In the waiting room, displays, information, and books create a literacy-rich environment. Where possible, volunteer readers entertain the children, modeling for parents the pleasures - and techniques - of reading aloud.
See http://www.reachoutandread.org/about/

I am always inspired by communities of children, families, professionals, and organizations taking small but meaningful steps to make our world a better place. In this project, individuals, families, and organizations get a lot of bang for their buck: Encouraging individual children to read during the summer, promoting volunteerism in children who can raise funds via their reading efforts, promoting literacy in at-risk families through the Reach Out and Read Program, promoting pediatrician-parent collaboration in achieving child development goals, and strengthening community relationships through volunteerism. Whether it's the actual reading by the children, sponsoring of the readers by parents and community members, or other ways to draw our community together, there is something every one of us can do. What have you done today?
Dr. Jeanne Beckman

Rotarians Warming the Hearts and Minds of Chicago's At-Risk Children

Warming the Hearts of Children
Editor: Richard (Rich) Lalley


Area residents helped Rotary Club nearly double its goal for new winter coats for kids living in need.

Continuing its 85 year tradition of community service, The Rotary Club of Winnetka-Northfield provided new winter coats to nearly 800 Chicago children living in need.

"A winter coat is an essential item in Chicago's winters," said Rich Lalley, President of the Club. "A coat provides more than just warmth, it allows a child to attend school, where they not only receive an education, they also receive meals. A new coat provides the added benefit of increasing self esteem- who doesn't like getting new things?"

New coats and dictionaries were donated to Lawrence Hall Youth Services for each of the nearly 400 children it serves. Additionally,new coats were donated to The Night Ministry and Chicago Commons, both agencies serving the neediest of Chicago's residents, including many homeless families.

"Lawrence Hall helps at-risk children redefine the paths of their own future," said Mary H. Hollie, Chief Executive Officer of Lawrence Hall Youth Services. "For many of our children, Lawrence Hall is the first home they have ever known. We provide a safe environment where abused and neglected children can move on to adulthood with resiliency and hope."

The Rotary Club will purchase new coats from Operation Warm, Inc.®, a non-profit charitable organization dedicated to distributing high quality, new winter coats to children living in need. Over the past eleven years, Operation Warm has distributed more than 600,000 new winter coats. Dictionaries will come from The Dictionary Project, a charitable organization that has helped distribute over 9.8 million dictionaries to children since 1995.

Area citizens helped the Rotary Club with this project through donations. "A $20 contribution will warm the heart and mind of a child with a new winter coat and dictionary," said Mr. Lalley. Several fund raising activities are planned for this project.

The project was funded by the club's charitable foundation, a grant from Rotary District 6440 and individual donations. The Winnetka-Northfield Rotary Charitable Foundation contributes to local, national and international charities and service projects. Local recipients include the Hadley School for the Blind, the Glencoe Educational Foundation, Child & Adolescent Bipolar Foundation, Communities in Schools Chicago, Haven Youth and Family Services, Jewish Vocational Service and Employment Center and Lawrence Hall Youth Services in Chicago. Internationally, the foundation has supported schools and libraries in Uganda, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Viet Nam.

The Rotary Club of Winnetka-Northfield meets Thursdays from 12:15 to 1:30 at the Winnetka Community House for lunch and a speaker. Membership is open to service oriented residents and workers of the area. Guests are welcome to attend. To learn more about the club and its schedule of lunch programs, visit www.wnrotary.org.

About Lawrence Hall:
Lawrence Hall Youth Services is a child welfare agency that treats, educates and provides a home for some of the most at-risk children in Illinois. Approximately 16,000 children are wards of the state of Illinois. Lawrence Hall Youth Services is a critical link in the Illinois child welfare system, providing highly specialized and individualized care for nearly 1,000 infants, children, adolescents and their families. Lawrence Hall offers a full array of services and seamless transitions from more intensive to less intensive levels of care to equip our youth with the tools and skills they need to set them on the path toward becoming proud, productive participants in society. For more information, visit www.lawrencehall.org.


About Operation Warm:
Operation Warm is the nation's largest nonprofit providing new winter coats for children in need. Through its core values of accountability, excellence, integrity, innovation, respect and teamwork, Operation Warm strives to accomplish its vision - every child wearing a new winter coat is healthy, able to attend school regularly, and has strong self-esteem. Since its inception in 1998, more than 500,000 children have received the gift of warmth. For more information about Operation Warm, visit www.operationwarm.org

Rotary partners with Premier Literacy for Dictionary Project

The Winnetka-Northfield Rotary is honored to have Premier Literacy partner with us for distributing both print dictionaries from the Dictionary Project organization (see dictionaryproject.org) and accessible electronic dictionaries from Premier Literacy, to local school children.

Premier Literacy, a division of Premier Assistive Technology, recently partnered with The Rotary Club of Winnetka - Northfield in June 2009 to sponsor a charitable distribution of dictionaries to over 500 third-grade and special needs students in the Winnetka and Northfield public schools. This initiative is yet another in the continuing efforts of the Winnetka - Northfield Rotary Charitable Foundation to support charitable activities locally, nationwide and internationally.

Ken Grisham, President / CEO of Premier Literacy, explains, `We were approached earlier this year by Dr. Jeanne Beckman of The Rotary Club Winnetka - Northfield to participate in their annual campaign to make dictionaries available to local students. We were pleased to be able to collaborate with Rotary to contribute to a campaign such as this that involves one of the cornerstone elements of literacy anywhere. One of our products, the Ultimate Talking Dictionary software application, is a natural fit for this initiative, particularly with the rapidly expanding presence of digital books and use of the Internet in our classrooms. We wholeheartedly endorse this effort and look forward to continued participation with Rotary in similar dictionary distribution campaigns elsewhere.

continued http://www.dictionaryproject.org/CMS/UI/Article.aspx?ID=2218

Stay tuned for our Rotary club's next project where we will provide warm coats and dictionaries to Lawrence Hall.

Rotary Club of Winnetka-Northfield Distributes Dictionaries to Local Students

Members of the Rotary Club of Winnetka-Northfield hand out dictionaries as end-of-school year gifts to third graders at Winnetka’s Crow Island School. Rotarians from left to right, Penny Lanphier, Literacy Chairperson Dr. Jeanne Beckman, Incoming President Rich Lalley, and Joe Fell.

Rotary Club of Winnetka-Northfield Distributes Dictionaries to Local Students

June 11, 2009 (Winnetka, IL)


Continuing its 85 year tradition of community service, The Rotary Club of Winnetka-Northfield this week provided a end-of-year gift to every third grade student in the Winnetka and Northfield public schools. Working with The Dictionary Project and Premier Literacy, local Rotarians acquired and distributed printed and computer software dictionaries to third graders at Winnetka’s Hubbard Woods, Greeley and Crow Island schools and Northfield’s Middlefork school. Gifts were also made to all special needs students throughout the two districts. The project was funded by the club’s charitable foundation and a grant from Rotary District 6440.

“Promoting education and literacy is a core value of our club, reflecting the priorities of the community in which we live and work”, said Joan Evanich, Chairperson of the Winnetka-Northfield Rotary Charitable Foundation. “We look for and support projects throughout the world, including in our own back yard.”

“We chose to provide these gifts to third graders because that is the time when reading skills rapidly advance”, said the club’s Literacy Chairperson Dr. Jeanne Beckman, who initiated the project for the club. “Dictionaries and thesauruses are great tools to help children further their vocabularies, allowing them greater pleasure and benefit from reading.”

The Winnetka-Northfield Rotary Charitable Foundation contributes to local, national and international charities and service projects. Local recipients include the Hadley School for the Blind, the Glencoe Educational Foundation, Child & Adolescent Bipolar Foundation, Communities in Schools Chicago, Haven Youth and Family Services, Jewish Vocational Service and Employment Center and Lawrence Hall Youth Services in Chicago. Internationally, the foundation has supported schools and libraries in Uganda, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Viet Nam.

The Rotary Club of Winnetka-Northfield meets Thursdays from 12:15 to 1:30 at the Winnetka Community House for lunch and a speaker. Membership is open to service oriented residents and workers of the area. Guests are welcome to attend. To learn more about the club and its schedule of lunch programs, visit www.wnrotary.org.