Oh, I wasn't suggesting taking donations from outside. My point about Cambridge, MA was simply to point to one case where something like informal "toy libraries" have emerged organically in communities.

It would be good to keep in mind in pursuing this that every place already has their own storytelling traditions. I have long had the dream of forming a troupe that travels around and at each location collects stories and learns methods of storytelling from the local population, and also performs some set of stories from among the ones that have already been collected. The goal in that case has more to do with recording cultural artifacts and being a conduit for inter-cultural understanding and dialogue, but I am curious how this could also be considered a benefit for ensuring that young children thrive.

It can also be nice to have workshops (for adults as well as children!) that focus on the puppet manipulation and devised storytelling through the medium of puppetry. Theses are skills and expressive art-forms in their own rights, and they have a tendency of getting overshadowed in learning opportunities, by the crafty making of the puppet.

(This is speaking as someone who loves both puppetry and puppet-making.)

I have managed to teach workshops on the storytelling and manipulation without the time being taken up by making the puppets, by using "object puppetry"---bringing various objects to life, finding characters in them, etc. You can also have a collection of puppets to use.

This is more effective for teenagers and adults, though, because it requires the leap of abstract thinking, so it's not so relevant for this challenge.