The holiday season is upon us. Our mailboxes and inboxes are beginning to fill with ads and flyers for Black Friday and Cyber Monday megadeals. Following this whirlwind weekend of sales is another important date to be aware of: Giving Tuesday.
Giving Tuesday is a special day that celebrates the impact of collective generosity. It’s a day that encourages people to use their time or financial resources to give back to communities in which they live, or to organizations that they value. Giving Tuesday is November 29, 2022.
This year, the NWT Literacy Council (NWTLC) is embracing Giving Tuesday by kicking off a holiday e-card fundraiser to support the continuation of Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library in communities across the NWT.
The Imagination Library helps to grow home libraries by mailing age-appropriate books to children ages 0-5 every month until their fifth birthday. Access to age-appropriate books can help support early childhood literacy. The lasting outcomes of childhood literacy include healthy relationships within families that read together and a strong foundation for lifelong learning.
To complement the Imagination Library, the NWTLC has created and distributed Family Literacy activity kits to help make real world connections between stories and everyday life by providing even more ways for families to talk, sing, play, and learn together. Since opening enrollment in 15 communities this summer, over 175 children have registered and 520 books have been mailed.
Our goal is to raise funds that will turn this initiative into a sustainable, multi-year offering. Your generous donation, no matter the size, will help send books and high-quality literacy activity kits to children during the most critical years of their development.
You can donate by visiting https://www.canadahelps.org/en/charities/nwt-literacy-council/ and selecting Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library around NWT from the dropdown menu. Every $50 raised will send books to one child for an entire year.
NWTLC will provide personalized holiday e-cards to donors who have given $50 or more as of Giving Tuesday. This card will include any message entered into the notes section of the Canada Helps site, and will be emailed to the donor to pass along to a recipient. To have an e-card sent directly to a recipient anonymously, please email nicole@nwtliteracy.ca. Share your love of reading and give the gift of literacy this holiday season!
To learn more about Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library in the NWT, check out this blog.
- Nicole Sharp, Family and Community Literacy Coordinator
