Earlier this year, Rotary International teamed up with the Divine Word Missionaries in Jamaica to initiate a literary program in the civil parish of St. Thomas.

Larry Corbus, a student at Divine Word Seminary in Girard, Penn., during the mid-1960s and a current member of the Chesterton Rotary Club of Ohio, got the ball rolling. The worldwide service organization donated more than 1,500 Webster’s dictionaries and atlases to fifth graders throughout southeastern Jamaica.

“The goal was to give the students tools they can keep for a lifetime—to expand their horizons, increase their knowledge of the world and develop their vocabulary,” said Brother Bernie Spitzley, SVD.

Representatives of the Jamaican Ministry of Education and the Rotary Club of Kingston East and Port Royal helped to distribute the books.