Dolly Comes to Kansas!
CEO Jessica Lehnherr and Vice President of Community Impact Brett Martin attended a special gathering of the statewide Dolly Parton's Imagination Library in Kansas to celebrate the expansion of the program to every county in the state.
Dolly and Governor Laura Kelly chatted on stage and Dolly even performed some songs for the auditorium full of community champions and partners. Before the State commited to funding half the cost of the program for all counties, champions like UWKV and our co-champion the Topeka & Shawnee County Public Library had to raise the entire cost, about $25 per child per year. Thanks to an allocation from the Children's Cabinet, your donations and corporate sponsorships now go TWICE as far! This boost will make the Imagination Library more sustainable in Kansas and will be a huge boost to counties that had struggled to find enough funds to start serving the children in their community.
The Imagination Library is just one cog in our Childhood Success approach, along with high quality preschool access and home visitation/parent education. The number of books in a child's home correlates strongly with future academic success. Beecause the Imagination Library is free to all children under 5, books from the program expose children from every demographic and every neighborhood to a shared literacy experience. (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0042085916654525) It also means that young children can build a personal library of 60 high-quality, brand new books, even when their family's finances might make book purchases less likely or even impossible. Your support of the Imagination Library removes barriers to school success for every child in our community.
