Here’s an excerpt from our Magazine Literacy Bee blog about Ron’s effort in San Francisco:
Hi everyone! …I teach kindergarten in San Francisco. Recently, my class has been doing a lot of science work in the area of ecology and recycling, so I was trying to figure out a good field trip to support that… last Saturday I hooked up with VolunteerMatch.com and posted that I was interested in helping the environment. Right away they had me linked with the KinderHarvest program, which provides a route for helping us get our schools’ and families’ “gently used” magazines to local homeless kids and youth… we are currently looking into local programs that service homeless kids and families. I even mentioned KinderHarvest to my students yesterday at dismissal time, and they seemed genuinely enthusiastic to get involved. It’s very exciting to think that my students will be getting a unique, hands-on experience in helping reuse products, and thus “saving the earth” in their own small way. Also, they will get the added bonus of actually being able to help in some small way those who need it, which I am sure will be a real awareness-raiser as time goes on.
Here is what Katie, the Boston kindergarten teacher reports:
I would also like to focus on generating magazines for food banks and shelters… Here are some of my ideas for how to gather as many magazines as possible… I have good friends who work at schools that they would be willing to contact their parents’ families about it… I have a friend who works at a local hospital, so I’m sure she’d be able collect a lot of children’s magazines… the library is right across the street from me, so I will check in with them to see if the librarians would be willing to contribute magazines… I have collected quite a stack of extra new and gently used Scholastic magazines over the past year that I would be willing to donate… I will scout out nearby grocery/convenience stores with good collections of children’s magazines…
Here are some ideas from Katie Simmons, a Boston KinderHarvest leader:
I’ve begun to reach out to shelters and foodbanks in my area, and a local Boys & Girls club has expressed interest in receiving magazine – especially with the summer months coming… I have a preschool teacher friend who agreed to have a collection bin. Many of the parents have older children so I am hoping they have subscriptions to donate… I have a friend who is an elementary school principal who will share Highlights magazines… I have made contact with the Children’s Room at the library, which agreed to share their older magazines for children. I picked up Ladybug, Babybug, Cricket and Cobbletone… I have a contact at a nearby hospital that receives monthly mags that would just get tossed or recycled, so she said I am welcome to come by an get them… I will also ask a friend in the suburbs who is part of a babysitting co-op, to email her huge audience to request magazine donations… I would think supermarkets and pharmacies would be a great places to set up a magazine drive!
Let’s get going in all the communities between Boston and San Francisco, and between Chicago and New Orleans!