{"id":200,"date":"2026-08-26T20:11:21","date_gmt":"2026-08-26T20:11:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sedso.io\/blog\/?p=200"},"modified":"2026-08-26T20:11:21","modified_gmt":"2026-08-26T20:11:21","slug":"a-tribute-to-literacy-advocate-dolly-parton","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sedso.io\/blog\/2026\/08\/26\/a-tribute-to-literacy-advocate-dolly-parton\/","title":{"rendered":"A Tribute to Literacy Advocate Dolly Parton"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The world lost a force for good this week when Dolly Parton died.<\/p>\n<p>Dolly contained multitudes and defied the odds to become a force for good in the world. It is difficult to imagine that a child born in a one room cabin that housed 12 children in Appalachia would ascend to the world stage. Her persona was wrapped in rhinestones and glitter but here giving reflected a humble desire to help kids who needed a boost.  Her life was impactful on many levels.<\/p>\n<p>Her talent for music and story telling led to success as a performer, writer, business woman and philanthropist. Dolly used everything she built to uplift kids, families and even whole towns. <\/p>\n<p>Some notable philanthropic achievements:<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 She launched a program to cover 100% of the cost for all 11,000 Dollywood employees to go to college. <\/p>\n<p>\u2022 She started \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/imaginationlibrary.com\">The Imagination Library<\/a>\u201d 31 years ago. She worked initially to honor her Dad who could not read or write.  A staggering 300,000,000+ books have been gifted since its inception. <\/p>\n<p>3,000,000+ books are gifted to registered children each month. <\/p>\n<p>The program is available in 5 countries.<\/p>\n<p>Dolly was proud to be known as \u201cThe Book Lady\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 School drop out rates in her hometown dropped from 35% to 6% after she started a program to pay kids to stay in school.<\/p>\n<p>Dolly\u2019s example of generosity and the commitment to children\u2019s educational futures makes one think what colossal impact one dedicated wealthy person can make. Like James Barksdale,  a tech billionaire, who shared his resources to impact Mississippi literacy, Dolly\u2019s gifts touch the future. <\/p>\n<p><em>\u201cIt\u2019s hard to imagine many people having a bigger impact than Dolly Parton. She  was born in a one room cabin, she earned 11 Grammys and an Emmy, built a business empire, helped millions of kids learn to read, and if that wasn\u2019t enough -helped accelerate the research that led to the Moderna COVID vaccine.\u201d<\/em> Barack Obama<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The world lost a force for good this week when Dolly Parton died. Dolly contained multitudes and defied the odds to become a force for good in the world. It is difficult to imagine that a child born in a one room&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-200","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sedso.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sedso.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sedso.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sedso.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sedso.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=200"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sedso.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":201,"href":"https:\/\/sedso.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200\/revisions\/201"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sedso.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sedso.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sedso.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}