The Pilot Club of Great Bend and the clubs of Pilot International focus on doing more and caring more. Being more motto extends to their international initiative of Brain Awareness and education with our Great Bend club supporting with a donation to bring to all Barton County the Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library.
In 1995, Dolly Parton launched the Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, to benefit the children of her home county in East Tennessee, USA. Dolly’s vision was to foster a love of reading among her county’s preschool children and their families by providing them with the gift of a specially selected book each month. By mailing high quality, age-appropriate books directly to their homes, she wanted children to be excited about books and to feel the magic that books can create. Moreover, she could ensure that every child would have books, regardless of their family’s income.
Dolly’s Imagination Library became so popular that in the year 2000 she announced that she would make the program available for replication to any community that was willing to partner with her to support it locally. Since the initial program launch in the United States, Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library has gone from just a few dozen books to over 80,000,000 books mailed to children in the United States, into Canada and across the proverbial pond into the United Kingdom! Currently over 1600 local communities provide the Imagination Library to over 1,000,000 children each and every month.
Great Bend Pilot Club President Sally O’Connor, said “ reading and literacy especially as a child furthers that child’s early development and brings a world of possibility and adventure into the child’s life and this programs fits perfectly with the focus of Pilot International’s Brain Awareness and Education programs.”
The support by the Pilot Club of Great Bend of this endeavor to bring the Dolly Parton Imagination Library to all of Barton County is exactly the kind of project the Pilot Club likes to align themselves to since brain health and reading literacy can be vital in the lives of everyone, young and old alike.
The Great Bend Pilot Club meets at noon on the first and third Tuesday of the month at The Classic Inn. Brain Awareness week will be March 13-19.