Just down the road from the laboratory where Thomas Edison invented the light bulb that was perfected by serial inventor Lewis Latimer, Jacque Howard has invented street corner libraries to light up imaginations.
Any human endeavor or start-up designed to deliver a product or service to people, whether it’s lighting, telephone, cable, or internet, diapers or detergent, or precious books, magazines, and comics for literacy, faces “the last mile” problem – how to get the goods across the final leg of their journey into waiting hands and homes. It’s the most complex and resource intensive link in the supply chain – especially for reaching underserved neighborhoods.
Library Boxes of Trenton is an ingenious community collaboration where artists, businesses, and residents adopt and deploy abandoned newspaper boxes repurposed as sidewalk libraries in neighborhoods where they are needed most.
Reading is Fundamental says two-thirds of America’s most economically stressed families (12 million+) have no books at home – zero. Research shows that infants from families without ready access to reading materials hear 30 million fewer words when their brains are developing for life. Children unable to read well are unable to learn any school subject. Adults unable to read were once children who didn’t learn how.
MagLiteracy.org is proud of its long-time partnership with Library Boxes of Trenton, supplying magazines and comics for all ages and interests. Like a lightbulb powered by electricity, our two ideas work together, co-generating enormous literacy power into hands, homes and hearts.
