Community Collaboration--Connecting Military Families
The goals of this project are to provide a service to military families and the community that is not offered in Winona County. It is designed to not only provide support but also to educate about deployment, parent loss and other hard-to-deal with and confusing events for children and their families. It will provide an opportunity for military families to communicate and better understand their feeling through books, information and communication. This project would also be a great resource for area educators and others who help children dealing with having a deployed family member. Besides the books and information pamphlets (book list and samples attached), the Winona County Historical Society will create a panel that will explore the changes of war correspondence through the major wars (Civil War, WWI, WWII, Gulf War, and current) that will be placed in the Military Reading Corner.
The original outcome goal of the project has been met: The Winona Public Library continues to provide a community resource not available anywhere else in the county to support and educate families on deployment and other crisis events that affect children. Because the project is ongoing, the library expects continued awareness and increased usage in the next year.
Winona Middle School PTA, Early Childhood Family Education PTA, Madison & W-K Elementary PTA