The Anoka Rotary Club recently completed their literacy project, which involved several partners and resulted in the distribution of over 3,000 dictionaries in the Anoka-Hennepin School District #11. Partners in the project with the Anoka Rotary Club were the Rotary Clubs of Blaine/Ham Lake, Coon Rapids and Ramsey, the Anoka-Hennepin Educational Foundation, a 501(c)3 that serves District #11 and a simplified grant from Rotary District 5960.

This project was brought to the Anoka Club by Phil Knutson, a Charter member of the club, who discovered the dictionary while visiting a club in Arizona. Gary Campbell, past president of the Anoka Club and past president of the Anoka-Hennepin Educational Foundation (AHEF) was instrumental in pulling other Rotary clubs into the project and submitting a grant request to AHEF. TV Rao assisted in the grant writing to District 5960 for a simplified grant.

Once the financial pieces were in place, there was still plenty of work to do. The dictionary had to be submitted to the School District for approval and letters to all elementary principals outlining the project were sent out. AHEF played a crucial role with their close relationship with District #11.

The Anoka-Hennepin School District is the largest district in Minnesota, and the project reached over 2,800 third grade students. The project also made books available to all third grade teachers in the district as well as each elementary school principal. Additional dictionaries were ordered to assure any new third grade student arriving before the end of the school year will also receive a book.

Labels were inserted in each dictionary by students at the STEP (Secondary Technical Education Program). The label printing was donated by ECM Publishing, the company that publishes the Anoka, Blaine and Coon Rapids newspapers.

The dictionaries are a unique combination of words like any dictionary and a host of information that really got students excited. The book includes information about every world country, each US state and US president, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States, the atomic table, planets, charts on Braille and sign language and finally the student`s favorite part; the longest word in our language, 1,909 letters long.

Since distributing the dictionaries, the Thank You letters have been pouring in. The notes really demonstrate how eager our students are to learn new things and how much they appreciate having their own dictionary. Teachers in the district have said their students use the books every day and they have been a wonderful gift for students to own forever.

Pictures and stories on this project have appeared in the Star Tribune, the Anoka, Coon Rapids, Blaine, Champlin-Dayton and Brooklyn Park newspapers, showcasing Rotary International and the ability of clubs to partner in their community and highlighting the importance of literacy in our world.