April 26, 2024 – Leonardtown, Md. – The Leonardtown Rotary Club, in partnership with the Southern Maryland Electric Cooperative (SMECO) and St. Mary’s County Library, is happy to announce the opening on May 11, 2024, of a storywalk at the Leonardtown and Charlotte Hall libraries. The walk at Charlotte Hall is along the nearby county multi-use trail, while the one at Leonardtown is by the beautiful garden in front of Leonardtown.
A storywalk is a series of reading stations. Readers walk from station to station, where the pages of books are displayed. As they move, the story progresses from beginning to end. The stories are picture books aimed at beginning readers. Children can walk with their families to have fun, enjoy the outdoors, get a bit of exercise, and, above all, engage in vital early childhood literacy. Weather-resistant covers keep the pages dry. The ground covered is generally flat, and the walks are only about 100 yards long, ensuring a pleasant but not exhausting walk.
“I’m so very grateful to Rotary for the funding for this $10,000 project,” said Library Director Michael Blackwell. “It came from Leonardtown Rotary with a match from Rotary District 7620. I’m grateful, too, to the Rotarians who help with installing the weather-resistant reading acrylics. The project could not have been completed, however, without our partners at SMECO. They made the heavy work of the post installations go quickly and smoothly, saving lots of back-breaking labor. They are great community partners!”
“Supporting education is one of the seven pillars of Rotary,” said Leonardtown Rotary Foundation President Barbara Thompson. “We are delighted to work with the library to help foster life-long learning from an early age on.”
“SMECO was happy to lend its equipment and the skills of its outdoor workers to build the storywalk,” said Sonja Cox, President and CEO of SMECO. “The cooperative has a long tradition of supporting education in Southern Maryland, and the project will ensure that libraries are places of learning both outside and in.”
Leonardtown Rotary Club is a participating club in Rotary International. As defined, “Rotary is an organization of business and professional persons united worldwide who provide humanitarian service, encourage high ethical standards in all vocations and help build goodwill and peace in the world.”
SMECO continuously works on projects to improve the reliability of our electric system with an increasing emphasis on sustainable and environmentally friendly electricity. We are People, Power, Progress.
