Partnership puts imagination into reading project


Some key decisions are coming soon for the launch of a free-books program for preschoolers in Vance County.

Garry Daeke, the resources coordinator for the Franklin-Granville-Vance Partnership for Children, said the local Smart Start agency will meet next week with representatives of, among others, the school system, the H. Leslie Perry Memorial Library and Jean Palamar’s nonprofit literacy initiative to coordinate their reading efforts with Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library.

Among the issues are how best to enroll children, how to bring books to the most children and how to help parents learn how to read to their children.

The FGV Partnership is bringing the Imagination Library to its three-county area. The Dollywood Foundation program provides a free book every month to any child up to age 5, as long as the parents agree to read to the child.

The FGV Partnership will send an updated list of participants to the Imagination Library every month, and the program will ship age-appropriate books directly to the children.

“You will be amazed at the impact this simple gift can have on the lives of children and their families,” Parton says in a message at the Imagination Library Web site. “We have seen it work in our own backyard and I’m certain it can do the same in your community, too.”

While Parton’s Tennessee-based foundation picks up about two-thirds of the cost of the program, the FGV Partnership will have to pay $27 per child per year to participate.

Time-Out Tuesday, a fundraiser in early March to launch the program in Vance, raised pledges for more than $5,800, roughly enough to keep 215 children in books for a year. Daeke said more than 3,000 children in Vance County and about 10,000 in the three-county area fall into the under-5 category.

Daeke said one question for his agency is how many children to enroll initially. That calculation involves estimating how much money the program will have to spend in future years, what percentage of participants will stay with the program and how many new children the agency hopes to enroll each year.

The Imagination Library’s director for its 10-state Southern Region, Christy Crouse, drove in from Pigeon Forge, Tenn., on Wednesday for the FGV Partnership’s parent resources fair, part of the observance of the annual Week of the Young Child. About 150 people attended the fair at the Aycock Recreation Complex.

(Events for the week also included new state Sen. Doug Berger, whose four-county district includes Vance, working for an hour in a day care center in Youngsville and receiving a check at the end for the average day care provider’s wage, $8.97.)

Daeke said Crouse brought information on estimating partnership rates, but more important, she brought enthusiasm. She also brought word that Parton is looking for ways to help out the local affiliates, all of which would like her to visit.

Daeke placed Crouse next to the Vance County Schools table, which allowed them to talk about cooperation.

On Friday, Daeke said the actual local launch date of the Imagination Library is still uncertain. The FGV Partnership’s board is deciding whether to wait until it holds kickoff fundraisers in Granville and Franklin to launch in all three counties at once or whether to start with Vance, then add the other counties.

The Imagination Library now has eight North Carolina “affiliate communities,” the closest of which is Person County.