This is pretty cool.
Dolly Parton’s Dollywood offers to pay full tuition for all its employees
Dolly Parton’s theme park Dollywood announced Tuesday it will pay for tuition, fees and books for all its employees who choose to “pursue further education.” The program, with funding provided by Dollywood’s parent company Herschend Enterprises, will launch on February 24.
Herschend Enterprises’ pilot program, titled GROW U, will be implemented for its 11,000 employees — seasonal, part-time or full-time — across its 25 parks, including Dollywood, according to a press release. The company is offering more than 100 fully-funded diploma, degree and certificate programs, and will also provide partial funding for 150 additional programs in fields such as hospitality, engineering, human resources and art design.
I especially like that it’s for degree programs that can lead to actual gainful employment, not feminist studies or underwater basket-weaving.
And I had no idea that Dollywood and Silver Dollar City were part of the same outfit. Never been to Dollywood, but I went to Silver Dollar City as a kid; it was fun. So this is a bit more encompassing than the headline would indicate. When I saw that, my first thought is that it sounded like Dolly Parton. Look up her philanthropic activities; she’s pretty amazing and classy.
As a kid and a young adult, one of the reasons I always wanted to like country music, musically, more than I really did*, was because of a few characters that seemed to be both justly famous and also famously decent people. Possibly the best of those was, and is, Dolly Parton. That woman is the real deal, through and through.
I still don’t get the overproduced flash and glitter of the Nashville “show”–not why I listen to music–but I love it that Dolly has always been straight up about doing the flash and pomp because she actually loves it. I may not get it myself, but I have to respect her for that. (And she don’t lord it over nobody, either! 🙂
She rather unexpectedly came back into my life when we first learned about the Imagination Library, in which she goes in halvsies (an important part of the philanthropy, I think, and part of the reason for its success) with local organizations to mail a book a month to kids up until they are of kindergarten age. The personal story she has behind it is worth looking up, and especially for families like ours was during that time, strapped for the means to indulge in such luxuries as one’s own new books, it’s almost hard to believe how much she has given of herself.
What a first-class lady. The world needs more like her. (And while I’m still far more “weird music” than country, often with no singing at all, there is no denying Dolly’s beautiful pipes; even after all these years, that is still one gorgeous voice.)
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* It was when I first heard bluegrass that the lightning bolt struck: now that is what I always wanted country to be!