Mr. V.J. Stanley of the Downtown Rochester Rotary has been a quiet benefactor of many literacy programs throughout our city. Mr. Stanley has contributed significantly to our school library, believing firmly that literacy is the key to empowering young people and fighting the vicious cycle of poverty.

     Mr. Stanley will be funding a special reading program called Accelerated Reading. This program costs over $5,000 and comes with special training for each of our teachers. This is tremendous news for Hope Hall, and here’s where we need the help of some volunteers.

     The Accelerated Reading Program involves more than 80,000 books. Before we purchase any of these books, we need to see which of the 4,000 books in our library are part of the new program.

     Our entire library of books is on the “old fashioned” cards in our card catalog, thanks to the efforts of our volunteer librarian, Charlotte Wright. Mrs. Wright needs volunteers who can do simple data entry to take the cards, one drawer at a time, and enter them into a special computer program which Mr. Stanley is purchasing for us. The work is not difficult, it just takes time. We’re very flexible with times, so if this is something you’re able to help us with — for one hour, or a couple of hours — we would be most grateful. If several people volunteer, we can get the job done quickly. It has to be completed by July so we can move to the next phase of ordering all the materials and training the teachers.

     If you’d like to help Hope Hall in this way, please call Sandy Tronolone at 426-0210. Tell her the day and time (including evenings or weekends) that you are available. Either Sr. Diana or Mrs. Wright will get back to you to make final arrangements. Thank you, Mr. Stanley, and thanks to any of you who can help us in any way with the card catalog data entry.

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