Author: Jessica Kalman

What is family literacy?

Family literacy is the way that parents, children and extended family members use literacy at home and in the community. It occurs naturally during the routines of daily life and helps children and adults get things done.

This year’s theme is “Let’s Be Active! Move*Play*Learn”

This year things will be a little different as we cannot come together as groups. However there are still some super fun activities taking place!

• Fort St. John Literacy Society will be hosting a book scavenger hunt all week long on their Facebook page
• The Fort St. John Public Library has partnered with Backcountry to put together a Family Literacy Camp-In January 29-31st.
• The City of Fort St. John Recreation department have set up a story book walk through Matthew’s Park as well as a Frostival Week to encourage families to get out and be active.
• Story Time From Space will be hosted on January 26th and can be found at storytimefromspace.com/live
• Decoda Literacy Solutions is hosting their annual Family Literacy Week Photo contest. Take a photo using the “Let’s Be Active” theme and submit to contest@decoda.ca or post on your social media using hashtags #LetsBeActive #FLW2021

Celebrating the People Who Made Dolly’s Dreams Come True

EXCLUSIVELY VIA FACEBOOK LIVE

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 9, 2020

IN CONVERSATION WITH, AND ACOUSTIC PERFORMANCE BY, PARTON

DURING THIS FREE ONE-NIGHT-ONLY LIVESTREAM EVENT

Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library Celebrates 25^th Anniversary with

150 Millionth Book

FORT ST, JOHN, BC:  – The Fort St. John Literacy Society and The Dollywood Foundation are presenting a free one-night-only live streaming world premiere event for The Library That Dolly Built, a behind-the-scenes look at Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library. Originally scheduled as a nationwide live event on more than 300 screens this spring, the world premiere for The Library That Dolly Built has been reimagined as a free live stream screening of the film, exclusively on Facebook, available nationally on Wednesday, December 9^th at 7pm EST. The screening will be followed by a conversation with, and live acoustic performance, by Dolly Parton.  Viewers can tune into the live screening and conversation on  www.facebook.com/fsjliteracy/dollysimaginationlibrary and ImaginationLibrary.com.  In addition, the European premiere will be Thursday, December 10^th at 7pm GMT, and the Australian premiere will be Friday, December 11^th at 7pm AEDT.

Parton created the Imagination Library to inspire a love for books and reading amongst the nation’s preschool children.  Since inception in 1995, the Imagination Library has grown into a global endeavor and recently hit a new milestone, gifting its 150 millionth book.  The Imagination Library is currently gifting books to 1.7 million children around the world each month.

Dolly Parton said, “I am so excited that we can finally tell the whole story of the Imagination Library. It is certainly not just about me. Our story is the story of children, of families and communities who all share the dream to inspire kids to love to read and to love to learn. My hope is this documentary will encourage more towns, more states and even more countries to jump onboard. One thing is for sure, I think this is the best investment I have ever made!”

Jessica Kalman, Executive Director of the Fort St. John Literacy Society stated, “We are thrilled to be offering this program to our community, and extremely thankful to all of the sponsors and donors who have allowed us to distribute over 18,000 books to date.”

 The Library That Dolly Built, directed and produced by journalism professor and director of Land Grant Films Nick Geidner, and narrated by Danica McKellar, goes behind the scenes of Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, to show how one of the most famous and beloved performers in the world has partnered with thousands of local community organizations to develop an efficient and effective program for spreading the love of reading. Imagination Library started as a gift for the children in Dolly’s hometown, Sevierville, Tennessee, and is now active in all 50 states, and 5 countries, gifting 1.7 million free, age-appropriate books to children every month. The film also provides a glimpse of the profound impact the Imagination Library has on the people through original interviews with authors, policymakers, Imagination Library staff, recipients, and the legend herself, Dolly Parton. Woven throughout the film is a biographical sketch of Dolly Parton, featuring rare photos and films from her childhood. Unlike most biographies of Dolly, it doesn’t focus on her music. Instead, it demonstrates that at every point in her career, any time she has had success, Dolly Parton has come back to Sevierville to give back to her people.

For more information, please visit www.imaginationlibrary.com/film

 About Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library
Since launching in 1995, Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library has become the preeminent early childhood book gifting program in the world. The flagship program of The Dollywood Foundation has gifted well over 140 million free books in Australia, Canada, The Republic of Ireland, United Kingdom and the United States. The Imagination Library mails more than 1.7 million high-quality, age-appropriate books each month to registered children from birth to age five. Dolly envisioned creating a lifelong love of reading, inspiring them to dream. The impact of the program has been widely researched and results suggest positive increases in key early childhood literacy metrics. Penguin Random House is the exclusive publisher for Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library across Canada. For more information, please visit imaginationlibrary.com.

We are extremely thankful for the Rotary Club of Fort St. John’s generous support of $6,000 towards our Dolly Parton Imagination Library children’s book program from their Drive Throuh Breakfast fundraiser! This support will fund two months of the Dolly Parton Imagination Library which means another 1700 books into the hands of children in our community! AMAZING!!

Three dozen Rotary volunteers and their family and friends came together for this year’s Drive Thru Breakfast held on Sept. 10, and served a record 1,500 breakfast orders.

“The Rotary Club of Fort St. John would like to thank our sponsors and supporters for making this year’s Breakfast a tremendous success,” said Rotarian Vince van Wieringen. “These contributions come at a critical time in our community, providing much-needed resources to organizations working to make a positive impact on child and family development in the city.” – Alaska Highway News

We are very excited to announce that our Dolly Parton Imagination Library children’s book program has received significant support over the last month. This will allow it to continue without disruption into the fall and winter months. The recent support includes donations from:

• Surerus $5,000
• United Way of Northern BC $10,000
• Micrtotel Inn & Suites $1,500
• Urban Systems Foundation $3,000
• Chopped Leaf $300

To date we have been able to distribute almost 15,000 books to our community and are so thankful to all those who have answered our call and helped us keep this program alive. The society is the regional affiliate for the program in Fort St. John and the North Peace, which deliver a book a month to registered kids in the first five years of their life. By the time they turn five, they’ll have 60 books in their library.

For more information on how you can help support the Dolly Parton Imagination Library children’s book program, please contact the Fort St. John Literacy Society at 250-785-2110.

September has been recognized as Literacy Month here in Fort St. John! The 2020 theme for Literacy Month is “Literacy matters more than ever!” We’re highlighting the importance of health literacy, digital literacy, financial literacy and workplace literacy.

For our local events please see the calendar and posters attached.

#LiteracyMonth #LiteracyMatters #LiteracyMattersMoreThanEver #FosterLiteracy 

PROGRAM UPDATE – We have unfortunately reached the point where all available funds have been used up, so will be SUSPENDING this program until we are able to secure more.

WE NEED YOUR SUPPORT!! Have you heard about Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library children’s book program?? Through this program, we have been able to distribute over 14,000 books to our community since November 2018!!

We are currently looking for funding/sponsorship in order to continue offering this program as we have reached the end of our available funds (approx. $3,000+/month).

If the program continues, we can provide a book to 800+ kids in our community each month. The program is currently full due to funding restrictions, so we are not taking new enrollments at this time.

Are you a displaced worker? Help us collect information on workers in our area by participating in this federal research project. Eligible participants will receive a $25 grocery gift card. Call the Fort St. John Literacy Society at 250-785-2110 to leave a voice message with your contact information.

The “World Fair Fort St. John” is an important once a year event that features beautiful presentations of culture and diversity from around the world. There are people with stories to tell, interesting music, amazing smells of different cooking, fascinating movements of dancing… it’s been a wonderful outdoor summertime event.

However, this year, we have a global pandemic…

The World Fair Team has decided that cancelling the world fair is NOT an option. The invitations are already in the mail and the posters are already at the printers.

We have no idea how to take such an important community gathering and make it VIRTUAL. So… we’ve hired Ted.

Ted, is a SD60 teacher, a community member of FSJ, and someone who gets asked to MC a lot of events…

Ted is now responsible for finding a way to pull this thing off. Ted will be LIVE… June 6th, presenting the FSJ World Fair… virtually.

How is it going to go? We have no idea… but we’re excited to find out on June 6th at 3:00 PM!

The World Fair 2020 is a presentation by School District 60 Settlement Workers In Schools Program (SWIS)

WE NEED YOUR SUPPORTHave you heard about Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library children’s book program?? Through this program, we have been able to distribute over 11,000  books to our community since November 2018!!

We are currently looking for funding/sponsorship in order to continue offering this program as we only have funding for 1️⃣ more month (approx. $3,000).
If the program continues, we can provide a book to 800+ kids in our community each month. The program is currently full due to funding restrictions, so we are not taking new enrollments at this time.

February 5th is #WorldReadAloudDay! Reading is better when we do it together. Celebrate and spread the word.@LitWorld #Scholastic

For more information click here