Literacy was a big theme during this Rotary year. The Pelham club assessed the needs of the community and found that the children’s science and history book collections at our local Carnegie Library were very old and needed replacing. Normally, funding for new books would come from a combination of state and local sources. However, the current economic downturn has meant a reduction in the budgets of all state and local agencies and the funding for the library has almost completely disappeared. Our local library serves a lot of children in our community after school and the need for adequate educational books was evident. We decided to apply for a District Simplified Grant in order to procure funds so that we could completely replace the worn out children’s science and history books in the library’s collection.

Once we received the approval for our grant, the Pelham club was able to purchase seven different collections of science and history books for the library. This really made a huge impact on the ability of the library to make relevant and useful information available to the children that need it. The books we purchased are designed to teach the students valuable lessons in history and science while presenting the information in a fun and entertaining way which allows them to see these issues a little differently than they would in a school setting. It is the hope of the Pelham club that these books will be a valued and important part of the collection at the Carnegie Library for years to come.