A Manx charity is working '9 to 5' to get a special initiative up and running on the Island.
Dolly Parton's Imagination Library is a gifting program that posts free books to children, from birth to age five, no matter their family's income.
There are hopes the scheme could be successfully launched here helping youngsters to build their own library of 60 books.
Charity Director Trish McDonough has been telling Siobhán Fletcher more:
Hi, I'm Siobhan Fletcher and welcome to the latest edition of our newscast. This time we're going to hear a little bit about a local charity that's been working 9-5 to get a special initiative up and running here on the Isle of Man, if you'll pardon the pun. Dolly Parton's imagination library is a book-gifting programme that posts free, high-quality books to children from birth through to age 5, no matter their family's income. I'm Trish McDonough, I'm one of the trustees of the Isle of Man imagination library. I'm Angie Calligan and I'm one of the other trustees of the Dolly Parton imagination library. They're hoping to launch the scheme here, feeding into the country legend's dream that all children should grow up in a home full of books. I caught up with them to find out more. Hi everybody, this is Dolly. Before he passed away, my daddy told me that the imagination library probably was the most important thing I'd ever done. Now I can't tell you how much that meant to me because I created the imagination library as a tribute to my daddy. He was the smartest man I've ever known, but I knew in my heart his inability to read probably kept him from seeing all his dreams come true. Inspiring kids to love to read became my mission. In the beginning my hope was simply to inspire the children in my home county, but here we are today with a worldwide program that gives a book on that to over a million children. For the uninitiated who've never heard of Dolly Parton's imagination library and the project, can you tell me a little bit about it? Okay so Dolly Parton's imagination library is a book gifting program that posts a free high quality book to children from birth to the age of five and everyone's eligible to open to all. She opened it in her home county of Tennessee in 1995 in a way to bring back some money to her community and it was inspired by her father who couldn't read or write. I vaguely knew about this because I listened to a podcast a while ago about Dolly Parton and she talks about they all grew up in this little shack and her parents couldn't read but then she loved to read and write music and stuff like that. So it's a big thing for her isn't it about just kind of getting kids to read and encouraging people and your group are bringing this to the Isle of Man so why did you want to bring it here? Well from my perspective, Angela's talked a bit more about the education stuff. Mine was basically that it was a fantastic bargain. I sort of came across it, did some very late night maths that were a bit wrong, fired off an email that was like oh it's dead sheep we should do this. I think on effort the impact, I can't think of anything better, it's because of the economies of scale of the Dolly Parton Foundation and their support and their relationships with Penguin Random House it means that you can bring it to your community so for our perspective in the Isle of Man we will need to raise the money to fund the books and the postage but we don't have any of the overheads, we don't have any salaries, we don't have any of the other sort of things, the database and that sort of thing that we need to do to support doing this sort of programme locally if we wanted to. So it's a fantastic return on investment, the cost per child per year, so for 12 books is £26, whereas if you were trying to do that on your own, they estimate that it's about £143 per child per year, so you can see just immediately the return on investment not considering all the long term educational benefits is enormous. And you said, are you coming at it from kind of the educational side then? Yeah I'm going to retire at HeadTeacher so I love to think about children's learning and about the impact that reading can have because reading is a fundamental key in the learning, in a child's learning journey and being able to read unlocks so many other areas of learning, so many subjects, so many chances at building knowledge and all kinds of things. So regularly reading to a child is probably the greatest gift a parent can give, it provides a connection between them and it just enhances their relationship, it brings comfort, it brings reassurance, it brings confidence, security, relaxation, happiness, fun, all those kind of things and you know parents are the first influencing a child's learning life and so if they can share a book with their child it means that they're sharing a wonderful experience, they are building language and grammar skills, they're sharing likes and dislikes, they're immersing themselves in stories and facts, communicating about real and imagined experiences and actually they're just starting that journey of love of reading, love of learning and if we can help parents along that way by delivering a book every month, addressed to the child saying you know mommy it's here daddy let's read it together then I think we're really going a long way towards supporting not only children's reading but also fostering those lovely relationships between parents, you know bedtime stories who doesn't love a bedtime story. That's it isn't it, I mean like I love to read but if you ask me where do you get a love reading from, well my dad read to me every single night and I remember it being a thing like me and my sister up on the bunk bed reading the book you know and I guess as well I mean similarly my mum was a primary school teacher for many years, you can kind of see that difference between you know kids who maybe have read from home and I've got that grasp of reading a little bit earlier versus maybe kids who haven't read till they get to school so it's just kind of helping these kids give them that little first step that little boost as they go, you're hoping that this project will just foster that more on the island as well. Absolutely and I think a lot of the feedback from around the world because it is around the world it's Australia it's mostly everywhere and the parents actually instead of seeing reading as a chore they are enjoying it themselves and therefore it's just becoming one of those really lovely habits, let's share a story together, let's share a book, let's talk about it and that's amazing, if we can foster positive habits like that then I should think it's a winner. I love this and you sort of saw this project and thought oh this is a great idea so then getting it off the ground then, how are you hoping to launch it here, you know we've got us all coming up on Timwell Day you know, what's the next step then for the group? Well Timwell Day as you say, social media, we are a little bit unsure about how to get the money so we need to raise, well we need to raise about £90,000 a year to run it. Our target is about 65% we're hoping to get a 65% optic so if we can get that money for the first year then we'll open registrations and people will be able to just register and get the books. So there's different sort of ideas we quite like to do, crowdsourcing we've already got a website up and you can make donations on that and we've already had a few coming in people just feel like it sounds fantastic and here's £26 for one child for one year but I think we'll probably need to be talking to a few corporates, a few people with deep pockets to see if we can get some money that way. If somebody wants to kind of sponsor a child, if there's any grandparents out there that think I'd love to sponsor my children, for one year it's £26 for the five years it would be about £130 and what we want to ensure is that we have enough funds, don't we for any child we enroll and it's up to parents to enroll and we can talk about that more in a minute but for any child that we enroll we want to be able to see them through to the age of five, kind of graduate the scheme, I think it's called isn't it, yeah, perfect. So you said people can reach out then if they're interested in their child accessing this as well, yeah you've said you've already started to get some interest so this isn't something that's being sort of welcome with open arms then. Yeah it appears to be and it's funny because I always think that we always have these ideas especially on the LMA and they're either going to be, people are going to be well received them or they're going to flop, I don't always seem to know but so far this one seems to be, everyone seems to be very positive, yourself included. So yeah we're optimistic and we do have a little stall on Timball Day, we can have a little reading look, we've got a cut out dolly part and people can come and meet Dolly and make, and yeah hopefully. So we have a few lines in the fire regarding fundraising which haven't come to fruition yet so we're not going to share anything yet but if anybody is interested we'd love them to get in touch, anybody who would like to give a one off payment would like to sponsor ongoing, that would be absolutely fabulous and we don't want to open registration fully until we do have the funds as we've said but with the interest that we've got I think we're feeling very positive that we can get it off the ground, we also want to talk to the local book shops, we're going to meet with desk to say no with the scheme so just to raise awareness with everybody so that everybody knows that it's happening and then we can get more support through that hopefully. So it sounds like it's taking a lot of work but it's going well at the minute. Yeah, in the days, yeah, perfect, don't work 9 to 5 on it, come on, come on, it's telling me I finished making Dolly porn through the whole interview there, went down the line when you do have a family sign up then, how will this work? So parents and carers will be able to register online for their child, their child has to be in the appropriate age, the appropriate date of birth and they have to have a post code that we've opened for registrations which will be hopefully the whole lot of man and then they are put into a group according to their calendar year of birth and then every month the children will get the same book if they're born in the same calendar year. So we also think that it'll foster shared relationships between shared bonds between children who are like I've read that book, I've seen that book and we might be able to do partnerships with local libraries and things where they can go in and have readings around the books and things like that. But that's it, so from an administrative perspective for us, our focus is really on raising the money, the scheme is effectively ruined directly, the books are posted, they'll come by a Royal Mayor which means they'll come by a Royal Man post and they will arrive, address the child present from Dolly. And if you're heading to St John's for Tim Will Day Tomorrow, find their stall, they'll have more information, a reading nook and even a chance to meet Dolly herself. Okay, that might be a cardboard cutout but you never know, we live in hope. Thank you for making it to the end of the Manx Radio Newscast, you are obviously someone with exquisite taste, may I politely suggest you might want to subscribe to this and a wide range of Manx Radio podcasts at your favourite podcast provider, so our best bits will magically appear on your smartphone, thank you. [Music] You
