The Denison University students who brought their strength and spirit to our Ohio Magazine Literacy Bank this week remind us how powerfully young people fuel our literacy moonshot.
They filled the warehouse with energy — sorting, packing, and moving mountains of magazines that will soon find their way into the hands and homes of children, families, and readers hungry to learn.
But beyond the warehouse, Denison students are part of something even larger — a growing network of college and university partners across Ohio, Wisconsin, and beyond. Each campus brings its own spark of creativity and purpose. Together, students and educators are helping us imagine new ways to connect literacy, sustainability, and community — from developing digital tools and creative campaigns, to improving how literacy programs discover and order reading materials, to building new systems for recycling magazines locally and regionally.
These collaborations are especially exciting as we grow our work throughout Southeastern Ohio and into the Appalachian region — areas rich in community spirit but often underserved when it comes to access to reading materials. With students, faculty, and campus engagement leaders by our side, we’re creating a model that can extend to rural and small-town communities everywhere — connecting knowledge with compassion, and imagination with purpose.
From Denison’s leadership to campuses across the heartland, together we’re building a world where everyone has something good to read.
Throughout our history, we’ve been lifted by extraordinary partnerships with colleges and universities that share our passion for literacy and sustainability. From a media kit created by students at Rowan University, to early collaborations with the Morgridge Center for Public Service at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, to supplying children’s magazines to College Mentors for Kids on campuses such as Cornell and more than 20 universities across Indiana, Illinois, and Ohio, our roots in higher education run deep.
We’ve also worked alongside volunteers, faculty, and academic programs at Otterbein, Kenyon, The Ohio State University, and the Columbus College of Art & Design — each bringing fresh perspectives and creative power to our mission.
The following list is a vision of what’s possible — the kind of projects we can imagine and pursue together across campuses in Ohio, Wisconsin, and beyond, fueled by student imagination and leadership in literacy and sustainability:
- Developing new apps and digital tools to connect volunteers, deliveries, and literacy programs
- Designing creative marketing and engagement campaigns to reach more readers and recyclers
- Building better online access and eCommerce experiences so organizations can easily find and order reading materials
- Adopting Literacy Newsstands at hospitals, food pantries, and community centers
- Leading campus-wide and community-wide magazine recycling drives that promote literacy and sustainability
- Expanding rural and regional literacy outreach, starting in Southeastern Ohio and the Appalachian region as a model for other underserved areas
- Advancing our Magazines IRL experiential learning program, where media, history, and literacy meet in classrooms and communities
Each of these ideas points toward an endless horizon of collaboration — where knowledge, creativity, and compassion come together to make literacy possible for all.
Literacy ends poverty of the mind, heart, and pocket.
The magazines we love and collect define our greatest passions. 2 billion magazines are printed every year in the USA. At MagLiteracy, we want every copy for sustainable literacy. It takes an industry from paper, to printer, to publisher, to consumer to reach a child or family or mentoring or job training program. This is how we feed people hungry to read at the largest magazine literacy moonshot in the world.
With titles for every age, enthusiasm, professional aspiration, and language, print magazines are the most powerful literacy engines on earth – uniquely effective for teaching, mentoring, training, and learning.
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