Monthly Archives: April 2011

Dictionaries are a treasure-trove of delight, a resource beyond compare and a necessity.  So it is no surprise that one of my favorite organizations is The Dictionary Project.  Dedicated to helping students become better readers, creative writers and resourceful learners  a personal dictionary is given to students to use in school and at home.  Volunteer organizations around the United States give dictionaries to third graders as this grade is the transition between learning to read and reading to learn.

The idea for The Dictionary Project came from a woman by the name of Annie Plummer who lived in Savannah, Georgia.  Each year she gave dictionaries to some children who went to a nearby school.  In her lifetime she gave away over 17,000 dictionaries.  Around the same time, Bonnie Beeferman from Hilton Head, South Carolina heard of the project and started giving dictionaries to students in Hilton Head and Charleston.  Bonnie received so many requests for dictionaries she asked for help from the community

Enter Mary French, a Charleston mother of two and community volunteer, who started providing dictionaries in Charleston and Summerville with the goal of providing dictionaries to all third graders in South Carolina.  She realized very quickly that this project needed serious funding.  In 1995, together with her husband, she formed a 501(C)(3) and with a Board of Directors, The Dictionary Project was born.

In 2002 The Dictionary Project went national and went on to include students in all 50 states.  Rotary Clubs, Lions, Clubs, Kiwanis, the Grange, the Elks Lodge and many other community organizations sponsor projects where they live.  Distribution of dictionaries to date stands at 14,756,000 with 2,461,000 in 2010 alone.

International projects in Central and South America and Africa are the newest addition to The Dictionary Project.

Joshua Zecher-Ross, music director at the Cohoes Music Hall is doing his part to make sure children are warm in winter months.  Here he takes a break from conducting the orchestra during a rehearsal for Cabaret at the Cohoes Music Hall to knit a few hats for Hats For A Purpose, our special project to provide winter hats for kids.

Joshua taught himself to knit a few years ago and enjoys the respite it gives him from a busy day.  He also dyes his own wool using, of all things, Kool-Aid.  He uses white wool and various flavors of Kool-Aid to make unique colors.  Joshua reminds us that you must wash the wool throughly after dying.

I was happy to meet Joshua this past weekend and thank him for donating his hats to Hats For A Purpose.

A big surprise awaited me on Friday when I opened up a bag containing 19 Hats For A Purpose – our project to provide handmade knitted, crocheted or loomed  winter hats for children.  A member of the Red Hat Society had been hard at work making these adorable hats.  Every stitch is for a noble purpose.  These hats are woven on a circular loom – fun and fast – decorate with pompoms, flowers or tassels.  The kids are going to love them.  Thank you lovely lady.

Want to get involved?  Don’t know how to knit or crochet?  There are many videos onYouTube – just type knitting or crocheting into the search engine.  You can also post a comment or ask a question on this blog.

Please take a few minutes and watch this video featuring my friend, Kathryn Cunningham Hall, the founder and president of Power Up Gambia.  I was honored to be Kathryn’s aide at a Rotary Zone Institute in 2008 where she was the keynote speaker.  Her story is powerful – how one person set about the task of raising $300,000. to provide solar panels to a hospital in a remote area of The Gambia – a hospital that had no reliable electricity and where babies were delivered by candlelight.  Now, not only is that hospital solar project complete but an additional clinic serving another 20,000+  people is complete with water and reliable electricity.  It’s amazing what one person with a passion can do.  More about PUG and Kathryn’s story in later posts.  But now, what about you?  What passion would you like to turn into a reality?