(Toronto, November 11, 2020) - On November 14th Invest in Kids, in partnership with The Dollywood Foundation of Canada, will launch Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library in Dauphin, MB. This will be the first launch for the celebrated international early literacy program in the province of Manitoba. The launch announcement will take place at 12:30pm at The National Child Day Forum, hosted by Healthy Child Manitoba.

This exciting program is designed to give children an early start to their learning and development, providing age-appropriate books to encourage reading and language skills. Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library is being made available to all newborns in Dauphin through the support of South Parkland Healthy Child Coalition, Dauphin Friendship Centre and the Dauphin Rotary Club.

“We believe this initiative will truly benefit our families in Dauphin in a huge way. It is also our dream that this program will be expanded to all communities in the Parkland Region and we are confident that through perseverance and hard work this goal can be accomplished,” says Karen Davis, rotary member and volunteer at the Dauphin Friendship Centre.

Each family will have the opportunity to register their newborn for the program and receive a free book every month in the mail until their child’s fifth birthday. The program offers a way for parents to connect with their children, support their children’s language development and prepare them for kindergarten.

"I'm just delighted that the good people in Dauphin will be launching the very first Imagination Library program in Manitoba,” says singer and actress Dolly Parton.

“Thanks to Invest in Kids, Rotary and South Parkland Healthy Child, kids in Dauphin will be able build their own libraries and immerse themselves in the magic of reading. Literacy opens so many doors throughout life and I'm incredibly proud that The Imagination Library program will be helping the children of Dauphin learn more and dream more."

Dauphin joins a growing number of Canadian communities taking part in the Imagination Library program. Each month children receive books that are carefully selected by a group of experts in education, child development and early childhood literacy, ensuring that the content they read and the illustrations in the books are supporting them appropriately at every stage of their development.

Since November 2006 when Invest in Kids partnered with The Dollywood Foundation of Canada to launch The Imagination Library in Canada, families from communities coast-to-coast in British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario and Newfoundland have had the opportunity to register their child. In March, Nova Scotia became the first province in Canada to offer the program to all First Nations children born in the province and in October the Yukon announced that it was implementing the program across the entire territory, making all newborns eligible to join. This year over 5 million hard cover books will be delivered to over 480,000 children throughout the United States and Canada.

To learn how to start an Imagination Library program in your community, please call The Imagination Library at 1-877-583-KIDS x 293 or visit www.investinkids.ca or www.imaginationlibrary.com.

Invest in Kids is a national charity dedicated to helping parents become the parents they want to be. By translating the science of parenting and child development into engaging, easy-to-understand, relevant resources for parents and professionals, Invest in Kids aims to strengthen the parenting knowledge, skills and confidence of all those who touch the lives of our youngest children to ensure the healthy social, emotional and intellectual development of children from birth to age five. For additional information, visit www.investinkids.ca.

The Dolly Parton Imagination Library supports children’s language and literacy skills and prepares them for school by gifting every signed-up newborn with a free age-appropriate book a month until the child’s fifth birthday. It helps parents build a positive parent-child relationship through rich sensory exchange as they start reading to their child from early on. Started in the U.S. by Dolly Parton in 1996 in her native Tennessee, the Imagination Library expanded across the States and is currently benefiting more than 480,000 families and their young children. The program has been available in Canada to families with children under five since November 2006, when it was launched by Invest in Kids in partnership with The Dollywood Foundation of Canada. For additional information, visit: www.imaginationlibrary.com or www.investinkids.ca/imaginationlibrary.

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Media contact:
Krista Lamb
Invest in Kids
Manager, Media Relations and Publicity
1-877-583-5437 or (416) 977-1222 ext. 224
[email protected]