FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: December 13, 2021
CONTACT: John Mennell, Founder
help@magliteracy.org. 609.651.8430
Columbus, OH – With a supply of over 300,000 children’s magazines, and thousands more for teen and adult readers, the Magazine Literacy Bank, operated by Magliteracy.org, is seeking relief workers, church missions, utility crews, and first responders, traveling from or through the Columbus, Ohio area to tornado struck towns in Kentucky, Illinois, Arkansas, Tennessee, and elsewhere, to transport and deliver boxes of reading materials to relief programs and schools for children and families.
The materials will be available for pick-up at the Magazine Literacy Bank warehouse in Johnstown, Ohio. Those interested should contact help@magliteracy.org.
“We currently have a very large supply of reading materials for children and readers of all ages at the Magazine Literacy Bank near Columbus, Ohio,” said John Mennell, founder of MagLiteracy.org. “We are ready to respond to this disaster to comfort children and families, many who have lost everything they know, but need transportation support,” he added.
“The very first needs in the wake of a natural disaster relate to life, safety, shelter, food, water, and other essentials,” acknowledged Mennell. “With so many children and families displaced by the storms, many homeless and in shelters for long periods of time, our literacy materials can help bring comfort, and can support rebuilding a community’s schools and educational programs,” he said.
“Whenever a child or a family needs shelter, whether due to a storm, job loss, trafficking, or domestic abuse, sharing the reading materials we love, simply, but powerfully says – ‘we see you’, and delivers much needed comfort,” he added.
MagLiteracy.org’s first natural disaster response delivered children’s magazines to all the Head Start programs in Mississippi, and to Gulf Coast Boys and Girls Clubs after Hurricane Katrina. The organization has responded to hurricanes in Florida, and through the Carolina’s, and to Super Storm Sandy.
“With publisher and consumer support, we’ve also reached and comforted large numbers of children and moms in a Las Vegas domestic violence shelter, and in Wisconsin, and delivered to trafficked children in Texas, and supplied cooking magazines to an Ohio shelter and culinary job training program for trafficked women,” said Mennell. “By sharing literacy love, our industry-wide program connects people across communities via common interests, as reflected in their favorite magazines,” he added.
About MagLiteracy.org
MagLiteracy.org (Magazine Publishers Family Literacy Project, Inc.), a 501c(3) charity with operations in Ohio, Wisconsin, Mississippi, Alabama, Canada, and India, is the first and only initiative of its kind in the world, operating like a food bank, but rescuing good condition magazines for literacy deliveries. Consumers, publishers, and retail newsstands donate vast quantities of magazines that are sorted, packed, and delivered to at-risk readers via community literacy programs, including food pantries, shelters, schools, youth mentoring, and job training programs, across the US, and around the world in places such as the central and Kashmir regions of India, Uganda, Croatia, Nicaragua, Jamaica, and to Inuit schools north of the Arctic Circle.
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