Westborough Girl Scouts collect dictionaries for ESL program
By Mary Shane Contributing Writer

(l to r) Carli Barnes, Kendall Paige and Kathryn Wilchynski, from Troop 633, show off a collection box for their dictionary drive. PHOTO/MARY SHANE

Westborough - Westborough's Girl Scout Troop 633 is accepting donations

of gently used hardand

soft-cover dictionaries for their current service project. The dictionaries will be donated to Chris Erb, a retired Westborough Girl Scout leader.

"Chris Erb was a Girl Scout leader in town for many years," troop leader Judy Wilchynski said. "She knew I still had an older girl troop in town, and requested that we consider helping with this project."

Erb will use the dictionaries for an adult English as a Second Language program in Worcester.

For Girl Scouts, service projects are voluntary and consist of doing something good for a person or agency, Wilchynski said, and a troop can do whatever the girls would like to do and whatever might come their way. Sometimes a need is brought to them from the community or word of mouth.

"! e girls get a thank you from the agency, no badges, recognitions, just a good feeling for helping others out," Wilchynski said.

! e 13 members of Troop 633 are between the ages of 9 and 12 and live in Westborough and Berlin.

To collect the dictionaries, the scouts decorated collection boxes and placed them in the offices of the Westborough High School and Gibbons Middle School, and in the lobbies of the Westborough Public Library, First United Methodist Church, St. Luke's Church, Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, Evangelical Congregational Church and Temple B'nai Shalom.

! e drive began Oct. 14 and will run through Monday Nov. 5. Residents are invited to donate gently used or new English, Spanish-English, French-English and any other dictionaries they can. ! e girls will deliver the books to Erb.

For more information, call Judy Wilchynski at 508-870- 1895.