General News
26 August, 2025
Rotary support reading
Maryborough Rotary Club ended Children’s Book Week with a gift local kids can open again and again.
Last Friday books for all interests, from Spiderman through to fact books, were donated to Maryborough Education Centre’s (MEC) grade four students.
It’s the first of 10 schools across the region that the local Rotary club will be visiting ensuring there’s a new book in more local homes.
The club’s 2025 presentations, which reach more distant primary schools, include: MEC, Avoca, St Augustine’s, Timor, Talbot, Carisbrook, Dunolly, Tarnagulla, Ampitheatre, Natte Yallock and Bealiba.
Maryborough Rotary Club’s own Alison Teese OAM said the annual program is a continuation of Rotary’s literacy and numeracy focus both locally and internationally.
“We’ve always had an interest in literacy,” she said.
Following initiatives such as the Baby Book Program, which donates a book to families with a newborn, the local Rotary club hopes this latest initiative will further promote reading.
Club member Meryl James hoped that having a book in a child’s home, one they picked out and enjoy, would show them the joy of reading.
“It’s to promote a sense that a book can be just as much fun as a screen,” she said.
It’s a message that was felt across Children’s Book Week, including MEC’s own festivities, which the school’s literacy leader Josephine Harris explained.
“Reading opens up all other parts of the world,” she said.
“I’ve got a student learning German now because of Book Week.”
A presentation was also made to grade four and above students at Avoca Primary School that afternoon by Rotary members Bec Lowery and Harold Brietinger. This marked the first engagement between the two organisations.