By Kyra Gillespie
Labor has pledged a cash splash to improve and expand the resources at the Pakenham and District Toy Library, if Shorten succeeds at the May federal election.
During a visit to Pakenham on Tuesday 5 February, Shadow Minister for Early Childhood Education and Development, Amanda Rishworth MP and La Trobe Labor candidate Simon Curtis, announced a $5000 grant towards the burgeoning toy library.
First established in 2009, Pakenham and District Toy Library have provided a decade of support to families and their children in the Pakenham community.
More than 50 families are members of the Pakenham and District Toy Library with roughly 120 children who access and benefit from their toys and the safe and social environment. If elected, Labor’s $5,000 grant would help in a variety of ways with new toys, including for outside play and shelving and storage.
“It would be so good; a lot of the toys in here are from donations or from op shops, so even though they’re great quality and are really good, we’d love to update a lot of things,” toy library volunteer Vicki Thornton said.
“It’s $55 a year for families to join, yet there are so many families who can’t afford that. So we’d love to set up a fund so that families can afford it and also have a bit of money as well so that if there are overdue things, or things are broken, they don’t have to foot the bill.
“Our systems here are quite antiquated, so it would be fantastic to get that updated too.”
Minister Rishworth said the grant is a long overdue recognition of the important place it has in the local community.
“When it comes to early education, the playgroups and the toy libraries get lost. We’re going to have a national grants program that’s going to give $5000 grants to toy libraries and to play groups to help with some of the resourcing. We think it’s a really important investment for children but also for parents,” she said.
“If we’re elected this toy library won’t have to go through the competitive round; how they spend the money will have to meet the guidelines of course, but that money will be there’s if we are elected.
“Simon’s advocacy is why we are here today.”
Mr Curtis said there’s a growing need for toy libraries in the La Trobe electorate.
“I’ve been around a lot of families in the community and there’s no doubt there’s a growing need. We’ve got five families a week moving into the area, and there’s going to be even more demand as it continues to grow,” he said.
“We want this service to be more accessible to everyone in our community.”
