Each year, the Santa Cruz Elks Lodge provides dictionaries to third-grade students in most of northern Santa Cruz County. This project originated in 2006 when Les Yeffa, PDDGER, was Vice President and introduced the idea to the District. Then in 2007, Les started it for our Lodge.

Les chaired this endeavor for many years, until 2013, when Deb Meacham offered to help, and she continues to organize the Dictionary Project with support from more than a dozen fellow Lodge members and other community volunteers.

And all the help is truly welcome, as the dictionaries must be sourced, ordered, and marked with a Santa Cruz Elks Lodge sticker that dedicates the dictionary to each student. The dictionaries are delivered to 24 schools, and each includes a Drug Awareness bookmark. In total, nearly 1300 dictionaries are handed out in the fall of each year.

— Les Yeffa, PDDGER