idealist.org

Since 2002, the California Dictionary Project (www.californiadictionaryproject.org) has been working to provide badly needed dictionaries to school districts in northern California. Our program is simple: Volunteers from the community visit a school district’s third-grade classrooms on the district’s Dictionary Day, presenting a dictionary to every child and using our educator-approved script to lead a 30-minute interactive lesson on how students can get the most from their new books. With the motto, "Today a reader, tomorrow a leader," the California Dictionary Project views dictionaries as the first and most powerful reference and active educational tool that a child should own.