Newtown Couple Offers A Challenge Grant

To Raise Money For Imagination Library

Newtown residents Deidre and Joe Smialowski are supporters of early learning in a big way. They have recently offered to match an amount up to $10,000 for money raised between now and the end of the year on behalf of United Way of Western Connecticut to fund Imagination Library in Newtown.

All donations collected from the Newtown community up to the end of the year will be matched dollar-for-dollar up to $10,000 with a potential grand total in the end of $20,000. At the cost of about $35 per year per child, that will fund more than 570 Newtown kids to participate in Imagination Library.

Imagination Library is a partnership between United Way of Western Connecticut and The Dolly Parton Foundation to promote love of reading and learning. This free, early literacy program delivers to children age birth to 5 a new, age-appropriate book in the mail each month. But it is more than that. The program creates excitement around learning and helps parents and their children build a library of age-appropriate books to guide the early learner to kindergarten.

“One of the great privileges of being a Newtown resident with small children is that they are eligible for this free program,” said United Way of Western Connecticut CEO Kim Morgan. “Almost from the first moment you mention Imagination Library to someone in the community, there is immediate interest. Everyone remembers their favorite book as a child — the special stories and colorful pictures — and time spent reading together.

“It’s something that instills an appreciation for learning and education very early on,” Morgan continued. “Our hope is that in five years every child entering kindergarten in Newtown will have had the same early literacy experience and foundation.”

Twenty-five percent of the eligible children in Newtown are currently enrolled in Imagination Library, and United Way is on its way to its target of 35 percent of children enrolled in 2013. The program currently has 336 children enrolled and has graduated 77 onto kindergarten. The overall goal is to reach 70 percent of the eligible children in Newtown by 2015.

While the Imagination Library provides books to children at no cost to the family and regardless of income, it requires funding to exist.

“We are fortunate to have such generous and engaged residents like the Smialowskis in Newtown,” added Morgan. “They have been involved from the start of this program, and are now calling on others to help continue and grow it so we can expand it to a majority of eligible children in across Newtown and Sandy Hook. These educational initiatives work best when volunteers and philanthropists in the community have a personal interest — and in this case, the personal interest driving everyone is the child in your home, or right next door.”

Donations for the Joe and Deidre Smialowski Challenge Grant can be mailed to United Way of Western Connecticut/Imagination Library Challenge Grant, 85 West Street, Danbury CT 06810. For additional information call 203-792-5330.