Carroll County Youth Literacy Rotary Foundation

Our mission is 1) to inspire children to: Dream More, Learn More, Care More and Be More through reading by supplying all children from birth to age 5, residing in Carroll County, AR, FREE age-appropriate developmental books on a monthly basis, mailed directly to them in their homes, no matter what the family’s income or citizenship. 2) to promote pre-K and K-Grade 3 literacy, developing creative, innovative way of thinking, learning and demonstrating knowledge, encouraging family bonding, improving the child’s future and the future of our community.3) Learn to Read, Read to Learn, Read to Earn.

CCYLRF believes reading begins at birth, benefits of a home library go far beyond the books, and the

Goal One: A grant funded Bloomerang, the community-focused nonprofit donor and volunteer management software might give us further sources to enhance registration and to ensure financial sustainability.

Goal Two: With financial/labor help of several business, we are developing a “Story Walk”: book pages in Plexiglas boards on the walking trail at the Eureka community center. encouraging exercise and literacy

Goal Three: We will evaluate the use of the on-line Story Time videos for use and may discontinue.

A grant has provide us with a social media consultant for 9 months who is training two of our board to continue the process after May. We are taking advantage of the many webinars by Classy and Dolly Parton Imagination Library (DPIL) . Partnering with local organizations and other DPIL affiliates, we are sharing/learning from multiple experiences. Our all volunteer board members have advance degrees. Our expertise includes: expertise in project development & management, finance, forecasting, fortune 500 & small business and non-profit management, research, IT, marketing, public relations, customer service, hospitality, and politics.

We increased our Facebook presence, started Instagram. encouraged public announcements by local radio/newspapers., and enhanced our email/phone call campaigns to register children. We arranged for the AA Dept. of Education, Home School Division to include the Imagination Library program in their electronic newsletter for the second year in a row. To encourage English-as-a-second language participation, we had the registration forms and flyers translated into Spanish, Marshallese, Hmong and Karen. These were then distributed throughout the county along with the English versions. We how provide books with braille on the books pages for the the blind and sight impaired children birth to age 6 (or for the blind parents to read to the children) . We also added a donation link on our Facebook page. To Donate Visit: https://carrollcountyyouthliteracyrotaryfoundation-bloom.kindful.com/ We are encouraging flex-time volunteerism so people can juggle their 'new normal' lives.