250,000 books have been delivered to local children
Since partnering with Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library in 2010, Kids Can Fly has gifted over a quarter of a million books to kids locally.
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“We’re really excited to be able to celebrate this milestone,” Becca McLellan, executive director of Kids Can Fly, told The Spectator.
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She added that it feels particularly significant as a relatively small community — and organization.
The not-for-profit has one full-time staff member and several part-timers, and supports parenting and early learning in Brantford and Brant County through a variety of programs.
One of them, a partnership with Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, mails free books to children each month up until their fifth birthday.
Parton’s non-profit organization, the Dollywood Foundation, manages the infrastructure, book selections, overhead expenses and monthly mailing of books.
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Local partners are responsible for their own outreach and fundraising, McLellan said.
The books that have gone out through the Imagination Library of Brantford and Brant County have been paid for by hundreds of individual and corporate donors as well as volunteers, McLellan said, including the City of Brantford, County of Brant and Brant Community Foundation.
Several locals in particular have really rallied behind the program.
SC Johnson has put thousands of “hundreds of dollars” toward the program over the years, McLellan said, and Potter Donn Zver donates thousands of ornaments each year for the organization to sell at Christmas time as a fundraiser.
As a result, nearly 3,000 local youngsters are currently registered in Brantford-Brant, finding books in their mailbox like “The Very Hungry Caterpillar Eats Breakfast,” Miguel Tanco’s “Count on Me,” and Parton’s own “Coat of Many Colors.”
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McLellan estimates they’ve managed to reach around 30 per cent of all children under five in Brantford and Brant County, with an additional 4,000-plus locals who’ve graduated from the program.
The Dollywood Foundation inspires local partners to aim to reach 60 per cent of kids locally, McLellan said, but they’ve had to put a pause on new registrants for the moment.
Like many organizations, McLellan said they’ve felt the effects of the economy on their finances.
“Some of our corporate donations aren’t quite as high as they have been in other years,” McLellan said.
“So we’ve been doing our best to fundraise and come up with new ways to engage the community,” she said.
They’re aiming to raise $16,000 to bring around 35 youngsters off the waiting list, and have the capacity to include even more local children.
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“It costs around $250 per child to go through the program from birth until age five,” McLellan said.
The program was initially launched by Parton in 1995 to create a foundation of literacy and a love of reading in her home county in Tennessee.
It expanded to Canada in 2006 and over 400 local partners have gifted more than three million books nationally since then.
On Friday, Kids Can Fly recognized their recent achievement with an event at Kidtastic Adventures — a celebration, McLellan said, and an opportunity to remind the community “how important this program is.”
Celeste Percy-Beauregard is a Local Journalism Initiative Reporter based at the Hamilton Spectator. The Initiative is funded by the Government of Canada.
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