District 5280 Literacy Meeting
Gary Turner, Literacy Chair told us about the Ethics Forum scheduled for October 11 for the Rotaract groups to compete for cash prizes at Lyola Marymount College. In addition, on March 1, Lyola Marymount will host the High School Competitions for the winners of local contests in Art, Music, Speech and Dance.
Cozette Verfari, District Vocational Service Chair pointed out 23% of Californians are functionally illiterate, and 33% of those people live in our district. So literacy is extremely important.
Major Kyle Smith of the Salvation Army told us about their programs for veterans, many whom need reading skills also. Chris Palzis gave each club 3 “Goodness Gracious” kids books on teaching good manners as well as reading, and will provide them to Rotary groups at cost who will have a program for distribution of them.
Clubs told about programs for literacy – providing books, often working with other organizations like the Molina Foundation or Operation Gratitude. Also, there are several programs to provide glasses. Our programs for vision at the Zine center in the spring as well as the one planned for Halloween certainly qualify as Literacy Projects.