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.

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

Follow-up on dictionary project plus

Our orders are in, the District Simplified Grant check is on the way, and we should be able to distribute our dictionaries in the first week of June. Here's what our project entails:

For the Winnetka-Northfield Rotary’s literacy project, the traditional Rotary Dictionary Project (one book for every 3rd grader), will be combined with added bonus of the Ultimate Talking Dictionary (computer software that is a full dictionary that reads aloud the definitions, so that every third grader in the Winnetka and Northfield public schools(plus one dictionary for each special needs and ELL student in all grades between kindergarten and eighth grade),can not only have his or her own traditional print dictionary, but can own his or her own copy of dictionary software to look up words on a computer at school or at home. Here’s a description of the Ultimate Talking Dictionary:

The Ultimate Talking Dictionary (UTD), is not only a comprehensive dictionary, but has other robust, integrated features that make it unlike any other dictionary anywhere. Like all other Premier products, UTD reads everything to you. The dictionary contains over 250,000 words, terms, jargon, and even proper nouns like geographic entries (e.g. cities, countries) and historical persons. UTD has a complete thesaurus built-in that allow you to quickly find synonyms and their corresponding definitions. The “Power Search” feature lets you look up words when you only know a partial spelling. Premier’s unique Interlink technology incorporates complex cross-references between all words in the UTD so you can quickly find related terms and definitions, even when you only have a vague concept of a word.

1. How will this project meet the needs of the community?

Even though many of the students in these two communities have family incomes that are far above those generally viewed as in need, most, if not all, students can benefit from additional vocabulary support and encouragement. The dictionary project has repeatedly demonstrated that students feel great pride in ownership in having their own personal dictionary. Additionally, many students have some barriers to easy acquisition to vocabulary growth, whether due to unidentified or identified learning challenges, disabilities, and/or English language learning. Combining both traditional dictionaries with software versions allows equal access and provides a foundation for lifelong learning.

This is a great kickoff to the local service project our incoming president, Rich Lalley, has planned. Stay tuned...

Winnetka-Northfield Rotary wins two grants

Dr. Jeanne Beckman, literacy chair and board member of the Winnetka-Northfield Rotary, is pleased to announce that our Rotary club is the recipient of grants from both the Winnetka-Northfield Rotary foundation as well as a district simplified grant (DSG) from District 6440 of Rotary International. Here is a description of the project:

For the Winnetka-Northfield Rotary’s literacy project, the traditional Rotary Dictionary Project (one book for every 3rd grader), will be combined with added bonus of the Ultimate Talking Dictionary (computer software that is a full dictionary that reads aloud the definitions, so that every third grader in the Winnetka and Northfield public schools(plus one dictionary for each special needs and ELL student in all grades between kindergarten and eighth grade),can not only have his or her own traditional print dictionary, but can own his or her own copy of dictionary software to look up words on a computer at school or at home. Here’s a description of the Ultimate Talking Dictionary:

The Ultimate Talking Dictionary (UTD), is not only a comprehensive dictionary, but has other robust, integrated features that make it unlike any other dictionary anywhere. Like all other Premier products, UTD reads everything to you. The dictionary contains over 250,000 words, terms, jargon, and even proper nouns like geographic entries (e.g. cities, countries) and historical persons. UTD has a complete thesaurus built-in that allow you to quickly find synonyms and their corresponding definitions. The “Power Search” feature lets you look up words when you only know a partial spelling. Premier’s unique Interlink technology incorporates complex cross-references between all words in the UTD so you can quickly find related terms and definitions, even when you only have a vague concept of a word.

1. How will this project meet the needs of the community?

Even though many of the students in these two communities have family incomes that are far above those generally viewed as in need, most, if not all, students can benefit from additional vocabulary support and encouragement. The dictionary project has repeatedly demonstrated that students feel great pride in ownership in having their own personal dictionary. Additionally, many students have some barriers to easy acquisition to vocabulary growth, whether due to unidentified or identified learning challenges, disabilities, and/or English language learning. Combining both traditional dictionaries with software versions allows equal access and provides a foundation for lifelong learning.


2. How will the sponsoring club or clubs work together to implement this project?
The Literacy committee’s project for our club is a “traditional plus” project, which will deliver a personalized copy (with a Winnetka-Northfield Rotary nameplate inside) of DictionaryProject.org’s Webster’s Dictionary for Students Special Encyclopedic Edition dictionary plus a copy of the Ultimate Talking Dictionary to every third grader at Winnetka and Northfield schools. Additionally, a copy of both will be provided to each child in first through eighth grades with an IEP or 504 (i.e. special needs students) and English language learners (ELL), regardless of grade in school so that every child can experience success by having an equal opportunity to acquire the rich vocabulary of the written word.

In addition to attending an assembly where our club members will deliver these dictionaries to the schools, Rotarians will also participate in a hands-on project of converting books on the third grade reading list (at the Winnetka-Northfield public library) into accessible text via scanning each one into accessibility software (loaned by Winnetka-Northfield Rotary Club to the public library, a 2007 district award-winning Winnetka-Northfield Literacy project). School-provided library copies of these traditional books will be scanned, and their accessible versions will be placed on a CD in a Rotary bookplated pocket inside the front cover and returned to the respective school libraries.

Hands on component:
Ø Rotarians going to schools and presenting “dictionaries with a difference” to assembly of 3rd graders and possibly assembly of special needs students
Ø volunteering reading books aloud, either at schools or at the public library
Ø Northfield: possible facilitating special thesaurus projects at school request
Ø Age-appropriate mentoring student projects of making books accessible
Ø Scanning 3rd grade book lists into accessible print
Ø Scanning/mentoring of scanning of other book lists into accessible print as project matures
Ø Accessibility software utilized in library with possible student and parent mentoring

Stay tuned to find out how we plan to "pay forward" this project