Literacy ends poverty. With magazines for every reading age, interest, and language, magazines and comics are the most powerful literacy engines on the planet. Our passion is to create the largest literacy marketplace in the world!
The seed for MagLiteracy.org was planted in 1994, while organizing community hunger relief efforts. Realizing that homes without food, a basic necessity, had very few reading materials – a major factor contributing to a cycle of illiteracy and poverty for children and families – we knew that magazines and comics were special and untapped for literacy. In fact, two-thirds of U.S. children in poverty live in homes with zero books. So, MagLiteracy.org set out to share the reading materials that we all love to feed children and families hungry to read.
The Magazine Publishers Family Literacy Project – a 501(c)(3) charity – was launched in time to celebrate the United Nation’s International Literacy Day in 2004 with a mission to deliver the joy of reading magazines and comics to at-risk children and families, while strengthening their literacy skills and self-esteem. Since then, we’ve supplied new and recycled magazines and comics to hundreds of thousands of at-risk children and families across the U.S. and around the globe. Our earliest successes were made possible by financial support from Austin Kiplinger and his family, generous annual grants from Foster Printing, and sponsorship from the Majeski Foundation, Pretium Partners, Prince Sports, and Stacie Jones, a Harlem Subway Sandwich Shop owner.
With favorite new magazines and comics sponsored by local businesses and consumers, and surplus and gently read, recycled magazines and comics rescued from throughout the supply chain, and with generous support from publishers, printers, paper companies, logistics and shipping companies, newsstand suppliers, and consumers – MagLiteracy.org puts wonderful reading materials into the hands, homes, and hearts of children and families who want to learn and love to read.
Reading is where it all begins. We’ve accomplished much, but there are so many more at-risk readers to reach.