CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA (CVILLE RIGHT NOW) – Children in the Charlottesville-Albemarle area will once again be able to receive one free book a month through Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library now that Martin Horn Helps has taken over as the organization’s local affiliate. Founded in 2016, Martin Horn Helps is a charitable initiative of the Charlottesville-based construction firm Martin Horn. It began as a way for the firm to offer additional assistance to its employees through grants and loans to support them through difficult financial periods. President of Martin Horn Helps Laurel Eberl noted that, fortunately, not many employees had need of the support providing them the opportunity to expand their outreach beyond just their team and into the community.
“We talked internally about expanding our reach and then said let’s help where our employees live and work, help our local community,” said Eberl, “We really had just started that outreach and having board meetings and talking about what we wanted to do when the Dolly Parton Imagination Library situation came to us.” The Rotary Club of Charlottesville had been the affiliate for the Imagination Library, but in July announced they were putting book shipments on hold due to lack of funds. The nonprofit felt the opportunity matched its newfound goals and through connections between Martin Horn’s owners and the Rotary Club, took on the mission.
“Obviously early childhood literacy is such an important steppingstone to learning and success later in life, so we just really feel like we wanted to support that,” said Eberl “especially because for a few months the kids did go without books and it wasn’t really that hard for us to step in and be able to raise some money and try to help this organization.”
Price Thomas works as Executive Director of the Charlottesville-based nonprofit City of Promise that aims to support children’s educational achievement and opportunities and provide pathways out of generational poverty. He noted that just providing access to books at an early age can be critical in a child’s education and development. “Access is huge, but there’s also the material, the very tangible you have to have the teaching material,” he said, “and so the opportunity to receive developmentally appropriate texts on a regular basis is a huge boon for these families.
Once Martin Horn Helps gets settled in the new role as local affiliate for the library, Eberl hopes they can draw in more people to the program. “I think the numbers that we had, we think we’re probably at about 1/3 of the potential children from birth to five who could be registered for the program,” she said, “so our goal is once we, once we get ourselves fully set up and are ready to go to really be doing those pushes with, preschools and getting out to events with the table so parents know about it.” Eberl shared that in just over a week since last Monday, the program had 210 new registrants from the area.
Locally, Thomas believes the program’s impact can help amplify the efforts already in place from other organizations.”Certainly, we believe education is a social issue. It is not solved by just City of Promise. It is not solved by just the school,” he said, “But the coordination of all of these programs who can be the best at what they do creates an environment whereby our kids have the best opportunity to learn.”
Eberl noted that the organization is hoping to start sending books again through the program in October. To ensure everyone who signs up to get a book each month, Martin Horn Helps is currently in the midst of a fundraising campaign with a goal of $6,000, enough to cover the costs of two months of sending books. The owners of Martin Horn have already pledged that amount in the startup of the transition, as well. While Martin Horn Helps is only just now taking over as the local affiliate of the Imagination Library, Eberl has already noticed the excitement in the community about the program starting again. “Since our affiliate status was announced, we have gotten so many messages from people saying, ‘we are so happy that this is coming back my kid looks forward to that book every month.'”
