Rotary Club of Goleta volunteers Lynn Cederquist, Don Galloway, Brian Rocha, Lark Scholtz and Tom Schultz recently participated in Reading Around the World Day at Harding University Partnership School.
Volunteers were encouraged to bring their own favorite children’s book or to select one offered at the sign-up table. Option three was to tell the children a story about personal travels around the world. That was an easy choice for Cederquist because she had recently returned, with a group of volunteers from the Rotary Club of Goleta, carrying medical supplies to Morelia, Michoacan Mexico, for SEE International for the annual cataract surgeries.
The students in Ms. Griffth’s sixth-grade class were full of questions about cataract surgery and asked many questions. What is a cataract? How is it removed? Does it hurt?
The class also listened with interest as Cederquist told about her travels to India the year before for the NID National Immunization Day to End Polio. What do the people in India eat? How do they live? Why is a cow sacred? What is the red dot on their forehead mean? Those were just a few of the many questions the students asked.
Griffith was able to give the storytelling a third dimension with her high-tech computer skills by projecting pictures on a large screen.
Storytelling and reading is an important tool that stimulates the minds of young students, and Reading Around the World Day at Harding was a day of learning to enjoy the adventures of reading and traveling around the world, not only for the students but for the volunteers from our community and for the Rotary Club of Goleta.
Galloway, Rocha, Scholtz and Schultz enjoyed interacting with all the students at Harding in this year’s Reading Around the World Day, and we commend Harding for involving our community with this important program.
The Rotary Club of Goleta is only one of the many clubs in Rotary International, and the students asked, “Who and what is Rotary?” The simple answer is, it is an international organization of men and women with compassion and dedication to help make this a better world through Service Above Self.
The Rotary Club of Goleta meets bimonthly at Glen Anne Golf Club’s Frog Bar & Grill Restaurant, 404 Glen Annie Road, from 6:30 to 8 p.m. on the second and fourth Tuesdays. Each dinner meeting includes guest speakers and interesting programs. If you are interested in learning more about Rotary International and how you can become involved in local and international projects to make this a better world, contact club president Mike Pitts at chilemike@yahoo.com or membership chairman David Dart at davidwdart@cox.net. Guests are welcome!
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— Lynn Cederquist is publicity chairwoman of the Rotary Club of Goleta.