Dictionary Project Committee
The Dictionary Project was founded in 1995 by Mary French of Charleston, SC. Its primary focus is to promote literacy to children in third-grade as they transition from learning how to read to identify and use information. Over the course of the program nearly 15 million third-grade students have received dictionaries including about 2.5 million dictionaries donated in 2009.
Elks joined this movement in 2004. Nation-wide they have donated more than 1.2 million dictionaries to third-grade students and their teachers as sponsors of The Dictionary Project over the last 6 years. There are 600 lodges that actively participate in the program.
Our Lodge began participating in the project over a decade ago and continue to distribute dictionaries to every third-grader in our school district. For more information, or to take part in our program:
Members of the New Hyde Park-North Shore Lodge #2107 had the pleasure of presenting third grade students at Manor Oak School with their own personal dictionaries in December of 2023. These books, from the Elks Dictionary Project, also contain a wealth of information about states, presidents, countries, sign language, roman numerals, and more. Pictured with some of the students are PDD Robert Giglio, Secretary Kathleen Lang, Regina Vitale (a
former student of the school) and Lecturing Knight Anthony Vitale.
