Each year the Brainerd Elks distribute hundreds of dictionaries to the Brainerd Lakes Area’s third grade students. The funding for this project has been through ENF Grants and additional local contributions from our members. The schools that received dictionaries were Aitkin, Baxter, Crosby, Discovery Woods Garfield, Harrison, Isle, Lake Region, Lowell, McGregor, Pillager, remer, Riverside, and St. Francis.

Even though the conventional thought is that with the access to information online that this was an obsolete endeavor. Our experience has been quite the opposite with many of the kids. For example, the children at Crosby were VERY excited to get theirs.  We had a number of kids that stated that they had very few actual books, let alone books of their very own. Aside from the excited kids in the picture there were also a few kids that quietly received theirs and while the hoard posed for the photo you see to the right, they sat down quietly off to the side and started reading immediately.

The Dictionary Project was founded in 1995 by Mary French of Charleston, SC. It's 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.

The Elks joined this movement in 2004. Nationwide 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. 600 lodges actively participate in the program including our Brainerd #615.