O&R, Spring Valley Rotary Share the Power of Words; Donate Dictionaries to East Ramapo Schools’ 3rd Graders

The Spring Valley Rotary Club, O&R and Schools to End Poverty (S.T.E.P.) presented dictionaries to third-grade students in each of the East Ramapo School District’s five elementary schools earlier this week.

O&R contributed $1,500 to help donate nearly 800 dictionaries to third graders at: Summit Park, Hempstead, Margetts, Fleetwood and Grandview. The Spring Valley Rotary and Schools to End Poverty (STEP) also provided funding for the donation.

The presentation was part of the Rotary’s ongoing effort to support educational projects in the community. Because of COVID-19 public gathering precautions, the dictionaries were presented to the school principals who arranged their distribution to the students. Past dictionary presentations were made by O&R and Rotary members personally during an assembly program for the third graders.

“Every third grader in the district gets his or her own dictionary as part of the Spring Valley Rotary Club’s Literacy Project,” said the Club’s Dictionary Project Coordinator Ed Frank.

O&R’s Regional and Community Affairs Director Neil Winter, a member of the Spring Valley Rotary, said, “Words are the keys to everyday life, knowledge and success. Those keys can help open up the whole world for these students.”

He added, “We hope the dictionaries will help instill in our children a rich appreciation of words: their meaning, their importance and their power.”

About Orange & Rockland

Orange and Rockland Utilities, Inc. (O&R), a wholly owned subsidiary of Consolidated Edison, Inc., one of the nation’s largest investor-owned energy companies, is a regulated utility. O&R provides electric service to approximately 300,000 customers in southeastern New York State (where its franchise name is Orange & Rockland) and northern New Jersey (where it’s Rockland Electric Company) and natural gas service to approximately 130,000 customers in New York.