HALO Read celebrates 200 enrollees

After only a year, the Warren Coalition is celebrating the fact that they have enrolled 200 local children in the HALO (Help All Little Ones) Read program, an affiliate of Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library. The Imagination Library mails free books to registered children from birth to their fifth birthday. The goal of the program is to develop a life-long love of reading.

“We had a huge challenge, kicking this off in the midst of COVID in November 2020, because there were no in-person activities where we could gather registrations and get the word out about the program,” said Joyce Jenkins-Wimmer, the HALO Read coordinator. “However, we had many community partners step forward to help us reach out to the community, and as events returned, we saw several spikes in our enrollment. Thanks to all of our partners, we are thrilled to be able to say that we have provided books to more than 200 children over the past year.”

The current enrollment for the program now stands at 165 active children, and 41 who have graduated from the program, which happens on their fifth birthday. Jenkins-Wimmer isn’t slowing down in her quest to enroll as many children as possible in the program. She has teamed up with the local chapter of Family, Career, and Community Leaders of America from Warren County Public Schools to host a table at the Christmas Bazaar earlier this month, and she will also be registering children during the Salvation Army’s Angel Tree distribution day next week.

Families can also register for HALO Read online at warrencoalition.org/halo-read. Physical registration forms may be picked up at the Warren County Community Center, located at 538 Villa Avenue, Front Royal, VA, or at Samuels Public Library, 330 East Criser Road, Front Royal.

HALO Read is administered by the Warren Coalition, in partnership with Warren County Public Schools and WHAT MATTERS. The Warren Coalition thanks the Founding Sponsors of the HALO Read program, including American Woodmark, Windcrest Foundation, and the Middleburg Library Advisory Board. In addition to these, Rotary District 7570 provided a collaborative district grant in partnership with the Rotary Club of the Northern Shenandoah Valley, Rotary Club of Warren County and Rotary Club of Front Royal. The Rotary grant will sponsor 100 newborns through the entire five-year program, while also providing literacy materials to the Front Royal Light up Academy and Maisha Home for Children in Uganda. Warren County Educational Foundation also provided a generous grant during the past year, and many individual donors have contributed as well.

Warren Coalition is a nonprofit agency established in 1994 to help fill the gaps in health care and substance abuse awareness to the community. The Coalition began under the guidance of Warren Memorial Hospital as an outreach project, but it has since grown and was incorporated in 2001.  The office is currently located in the Warren County Community Center.  Their mission is to make Warren County a safe, healthy, and drug free community through many programs and in collaboration with 15+ member agencies.

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. For more information, please visit imaginationlibrary.com.