The Des Moines Rotary Club is focusing much of its current community service efforts on Highline schools.

Among the group's projects so far this year, it has given money for multicultural books, presenting dictionaries to all Des Moines third-graders and funded recreation programs for middle school students.

The Des Moines Rotary joined forces with Rotary clubs of Des Moines, Southcenter and SeaTac, in partnership with the Highline Schools Foundation for Excellence, in contributing $5,000 to the Highline district for the purchase of multicultural books.

Rotary District 5030 matched this gift for a combined total of $10,000, which was used to purchase over 500 books.

Rotary Club members recently joined the staff at Madrona Elementary School as librarian Marcia Kauzlarich introduced some of the multicultural books to first grade readers.

"We have so much diversity here and many of the students are not able to get to the library because of transportation issues," said Kathy Allen, family support liaison at Madrona Elementary.

"It's great that the students and their families can relate to some of these books."

For the fourth year in a row, Des Moines Rotary also presented a dictionary to every third-grade student in the city.

Rotarians visited third-grade classrooms at Woodmont, Parkside, Des Moines, North Hill, and Midway elementary schools.

About 350 dictionaries were given out in this year's "dictionaries by the dozens" project.

"The students are so incredibly excited to get their dictionaries," said Tami Greene, Rotary president, who has helped distribute the dictionaries at schools.

"They are really surprised when we tell them they can write their names on the inside cover."

Pacific Middle School students also benefited from a $9,000 grant from the group to provide seed money for after school recreation programs.

The program is a partnership between the Des Moines Parks and Recreation Department, Highline School District, the Destination Des Moines Youth and Seniors Committee, and the Des Moines Legacy Foundation.

Program offerings were based on a survey of Pacific Middle school students to establish which types of programs were of interest to them.

Among the activities were clubs for cooking, computers, drill, teen traveling and after school study.

The cooking and computer clubs proved to be particularly popular offerings, with each reaching near capacity attendance.

Students enrolled in the cooking club were shuttled to and from the Des Moines Activity Center, where students learned cooking basics, including etiquette, kitchen tools, table setting, and terminology.

The students used their newfound knowledge to create dishes such as French toast, spaghetti, cake, and omelets.