A SAMPLE OF LITERACY IDEAS

1. Publish a message on your club’s internet page

2. Publish one or more messages in your local newspaper

3. Arrange an interview about Rotary and literacy which can be broadcast on local Radio or Television.

4. Devote one or more of your club’s weekly meetings to presentations by persons familiar with literacy issues. For example:

a. Teachers of children, youth or adults

b. Directors or principals of schools

c. Municipal or state directors or secretaries of education

d. The mayor of the local city

e. A youth who failed to learn to read in elementary school but had his or her life changed recently by successfully completing a remedial course.

f. An adult who had been illiterate but took an adult literacy course and, as a result, had his or her life dramatically changed for the better.

5. Sponsor a literacy class for youth or adults

6. Sponsor a meeting of local business leaders for the purpose of enlisting them in local efforts to promote literacy.

7. Sponsor a seminar or workshop where Rotarians can discuss literacy issues with community members and public officials.

8. Devote a club meeting to a presentation about:

a. Literacy programs available, especially CLE (Concentrated Language Encounter) and/or CALS (Computer-Assisted Literacy Solution)

b. The Rotary Foundation and available sources of financial support for literacy projects. Project LINK could be part of this presentation.

9. Sponsor presentations about literacy needs and opportunities for needy segments of the local population. (The audience could be community groups that might help meet those needs and/or the families with needy children who can be made aware of what parents can do to help their children learn to read, write and compute).

10 Hold a public recognition ceremony for one or more local educators or students.

11. Make a gift of books, supplies, or equipment to a local school

12. Start or announce a significant new literacy project such as the establishment of a formal partnership with a local school, or an Imagination Library Project, or a Books for Babies project, etc.

13. Conduct a book drive.

14. Place 4-Way Test posters in classrooms at a local school.

15. Announce plans for an international literacy project, perhaps with a TRF grant. Or elebrate an existing international project with an event which gets local publicity.

Richard Hattwick

(orld Coordinator for Literacy)

January 2010

PHOTO: Monica and Carl-wilhelm Stenhammar, incoming TRF Chair