United Way donated $75,000 to the Tamworth branch of Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library this week, offering a major boost to the town’s six-year-long commitment to the program.
“It’s great to be in Tamworth today to present to the Tamworth community $75,000 towards Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library Programme,” United Way Australia CEO Liz Dibbs said today.
“We’re doing it because Tamworth has truly been a visionary leader in early childhood literacy.”
The Imagination Library is a program where children are signed up to receive an age-appropriate book each month, free of charge, from birth to age six, and was started by country music star and icon Dolly Parton, and has been supported by both Tamworth Regional Council and local businesses since its inception.
“Starting this programme six years ago, signing children up from birth, we’re now seeing the results absolutely as those children reach preschool and then kindergarten,” Dibbs said.
“The foundations are laid for them to really start school well with strong literacy, and the teachers are telling us what an incredible difference this is making.”
When the program started in Tamworth six years ago, Liz said, only ten families signed up, but has now grown to over a thousand, with over 4000 children on board and receiving monthly books.
“We know that it takes a village to raise a child, and I’ve got to say, I think Tamworth is really the leader in showing the way and how that can be done.”
“It’s fundamentally important to those children’s trajectory in life and their engagement with education and learning, and we know how much it’s helping.”
“So thank you very much to Tamworth.
“We wanted to show United Way Australia supported the programme through the $75,000 cheque.
“ It’s a recognition of our partnership and our appreciation for what Tamworth and the community are doing and leading the way for children and early literacy.”
Leo Krikmann, the Imagination Library Program Manager for Australia, said it was a very small investment that had a huge impact on children’s lives.
“It’s two cups of coffee a month, $9 a month per book to get to a child via Australia Post, and it’s wonderful to see the children’s reaction when they see those books coming in the mail.
“They often run to the letter box and they’re pulling it down, sitting on the driveway and reading the book already, or what, opening it up, which is so exciting.”
“In terms of the home literacy, environment, reading, attitudes and interactions, children on the Imagination Library programme here were being read to more often than the average Australian child.”
Krikmann said that Tamworth’s children had a 27% higher literacy rate, and for a long time that was 97% higher, than children across the country, with 76% more books in their homes.
“That’s looking at it from a whole of Australia perspective, from other government data that shows what the attitudes are.”
Krikmann said that Tamworth’s program had proven to be successful, with Imagination’s research, Claire Galea, doing her PhD on it.
“She’s going in two weeks time to Oxford University, to the World Literacy Forum to speak about the Tamworth program.
“She’s been asked to speak there to put Tamworth’s program on the map globally as a foundational program for changing the dynamic in a community of how children will be developed and the long term effect of that.” Galea’s research showed that “the survey responses of caregivers of Tamworth children in the Imagination Library program suggest that their children were read to more frequently, for longer periods, and had access to more children’s books than the average Australian child.”
Mayor Russell Webb, who was on hand to receive the cheque, said the effort is funded from numerous sources, including the Council and community, especially local businesses.
“This is a wonderful programme, and we thank you for your support,” Webb said.
“Our community is eternally grateful for what you’ve done for us and for our children in our local government area – thank you.”