The Ballarat Toy Library is looking for a new home.
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The library is currently housed in the Eureka Family Resource Centre on Humffray Street South, which was listed as an asset potentially surplus to council’s needs in a former agenda.
This is the same list that included the Peel Street South car park and the site of the Mount Helen kindergarten.
READ MORE: Ballarat City-owned car park will stay open
While council has no involvement in the library, and no decision has been made on the future of the resource centre, toy library president Sally Tuck said they had been very helpful in the relocation.
“When we found out about the Toy Library (needing to move), it wasn’t the greatest of news – we’d only made the move (to the centre) six years ago,” she said.
“(But) the council officers have been awesome.”
After finding out 12 months ago, the library has been looking at more than 30 new homes.
“We do have one (potential place) at the moment, we’re in a memorandum of understanding process,” Ms Tuck said.
“The potential site is closer to the CBD, in a cluster with other facilities.
“Whilst we hope it all works out, we’re praying for a miracle.”
The toy library is 100 per cent staffed by volunteers, and currently pays no rent to the council at the Eureka Family Resource Centre.
Toys for children with special needs, educational kits, and larger items like balance bikes are available.
Library secretary Sylvia Stephens said it was a valuable resource, with concession memberships very reasonably priced.
“There’s also members of our community who are eco-friendly, so they want to borrow toys knowing they’re not contributing to landfill with the packaging,” she said.
“Given that children actually change developmentally and socially in a very short space of time, we’ve got toys that will cover each and every one of those stages.”
Library members are given half-price memberships in return for volunteering two to four hours each term.
Volunteer Stephanie Freeman joined five years ago after her first child was born, and said it was a great initiative.
“We have a premises in mind, but we’re in the very early stages of sorting it out,” she said.
“If we could stay where we are, that would be fantastic, it’s purpose-built - it used to be an old kinder.
“Hopefully, we will have some more news just after the new year.”
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