PROGRAM

By John Gulley

It has been my family’s tradition for several years to visit Branson, Missouri during the holiday season. One of our favorite annual activities is to pay a visit to Dolly Parton’s Stampede dinner show. Each show consists of a meal, a trick riding show, and a “competition” between the different sides of the arena. As part of the competition, children are randomly selected from the audience and invited to participate in different events. On one of our annual visits, my daughter Claire was chosen to chase chickens from one side of the arena to the other. As her prize, she received a copy of Dolly Parton’s children’s book “Coat of Many Colors” based on her song of the same name. The book contained a message from the famous singer/songwriter, and information about Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library.

Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library is a free children’s book gifting program started by Dolly Parton in 1995. The program started by offering every child in her home county in Tennessee a free age-appropriate book each month in the mail until the age of five, regardless of family income. In 2000, the Imagination Library was expanded to make the program available to any community that would partner with the Dolly Parton Foundation and support it locally. The program has since expanded to over 1,800 local communities in the U.S. and abroad.

After learning more about the program, my family and I decided to pursue bringing Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library to our community. At first, we considered starting a county-wide program, but decided that was more than we were ready to take on. We settled on setting up a program in the area defined by our local school district. The local affiliate is responsible for enrolling children into the program and maintaining the database. The local affiliate is also responsible for raising $25 per child per year to cover the cost of the books and postage. For our community, we needed to raise $2,000 to get the program off the ground.

As a member of Sesser-Goode Lodge No. 744, I was aware of IMCAP and the Youth Organization Connection but had not really explored the program or its benefits. A Brother suggested that I reach out to the program to see if IMCAP would be interested in partnering with my Lodge in supporting our local affiliate of Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library. After a quick phone call to Gale Kilbury, I filled out a simple application. Within a few weeks, I was notified that IMCAP, and the Youth Organization Connection was excited to contribute $2,000 to our program. This, along with a $500 contribution from the Lodge, gave us the funds we needed to start our program.

To date, Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library has mailed over 150 million books to children throughout the United States and abroad. In our little community, we currently have seventy-four children enrolled, two graduates (meaning the child has turned 5) and have mailed out 246 books free of charge to the families who receive them. We are striving to enroll more children and hope to have at least seventy-five more join our program.

We have had great community partners step forward to assist us including the Sesser Youth and Family Activity Planners (Sesser YAP), the City of Sesser, area churches, and other individuals. The timely support of Sesser-Goode Lodge No. 744, IMCAP, and the Youth Organization Connection was key to getting the program off the ground.

The Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library website features a quote from Dolly Parton herself that says, “You can never get enough books into the hands of enough children.” With the help of many community partners including IMCAP, we are working to get as many books as possible into the hands of as many Sesser-Valier children as possible.

W.B. John Gulley Past Master Sesser-Goode Lodge No. 744