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(Toronto, January 14, 2021) – Tuesday, January 27th is ABC Family Literacy Day in Canada and, in celebration, the Dauphin Friendship Centre, in partnership with Invest in Kids, will launch their Dolly Parton Imagination Library program with an event for families at the Dauphin Joint Recreation Building (2nd Floor) from 10am-11:30am. This will be the first launch for the celebrated international early literacy program in the province of Manitoba.
Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library 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 children from birth to age five in Dauphin through the support of South Parkland Healthy Child Coalition, Dauphin Friendship Centre and the Dauphin Rotary Club.
The launch event on the 27th will feature literacy-themed activities for parents and their young children, including storybook readings by local celebrities and dignitaries.
“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 in the community will have the opportunity to register their child 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.
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. The Yukon will also be holding their launch event on January 27th, as will Merritt, BC. In 2008, the program delivered over 5 million hard cover books to over 490,000 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 supporting parents in the most important undertaking of their lives – raising a child. Understanding the power of parenting, the critical importance of the first five years and parents’ hopes to be the very best parent they can be, Invest in Kids translates the science of parenting and child development into easy-to-understand resources that strengthen parenting knowledge, skills and confidence and provide practical approaches that have context in today’s world. 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]
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