When I look at the beautiful face of my granddaughter, Ashlynne, I see curiosity, enthusiasm and optimism. When I cuddle and read with her I feel her joy when she listens to me and when she enters in and reads along with me. When Ashlynne goes off to pre-school each day she continues to have access to education and literacy by caring teachers. When I think about children everywhere, I think, this should be how it is with every child. Sadly this is not so. Did you know that sixty-seven million children worldwide have no access to education and more than 750 million people over the age of 15 are illiterate? Did you know that only 13% of children in Arizona entering kindergarten meet benchmark early literacy skills?

F.D.R. said "we may not be able to prepare the future for our children but we can at least prepare our children for the future."

September is designated as Rotary's focus on Basic Education and Literacy month. The RI goal is to strengthen the capacity of communities to support basic education and literacy, reduce gender disparity in education, and increase adult literacy. Tucson Rotary is certainly strengthening the capacity of communities in supporting education through funding that is generated from our annual and spectacular Tucson Classics Car Show. This year marks our tenth anniversary and with less than a month away our tactical and strategic leadership teams are meeting constantly to hammer out all the logistics of this complex operation. Many devoted members continue to work hard in the areas of sales and marketing activities, traffic and parking details, facilities’ maintenance, Friday night auction execution, vendor and booth coordination, goodie bag item collection, car registration, and finding ways to increase member ticket sales. The overall operations and administration require laser-like focus of our members for this major event.  Phew!  Our primary beneficiary this year is Make Way For Books, an organization that is committed to "Building a Literacy-Rich Environment" for children and families. Our Club is indeed fighting illiteracy and promoting education by giving 40% of proceeds from the Tucson Classics Car Show to Make Way For Books. In this way, too, we are helping to make a change in the benchmark early literacy skills statistic for Arizona. But then our Tucson Rotary Club has been doing that since almost Day One-promoting literacy in our community and putting books in the hands of children.  My desire for Ashlynne is that she will grow up to be a warrior for education and literacy just as we Rotarians are.  I know this for sure-she’ll love the Tucson Classics Car Show when she goes for the first time on that warm, sunny Saturday in October, October 15 to be exact, less than 4 weeks away.