Over a billion magazines across over 7,000 titles in the US alone are printed each year. We love love love them, but what happens to them after we read them?
The Magazine Literacy Bank is operated by MagLiteracy.org, with locations in Wisconsin, Ohio, Mississippi, Alabama, Toronto, and India, like a food bank that feeds people hungry to read. It is the only program of its kind in the world, and rescues every good condition magazine copy it can from consumers, publishers, and newsstands for delivery to literacy programs at food pantries, homeless, domestic abuse, and trafficking shelters, mentoring and job training programs, schools, foster care agencies, and more.
The magazines, which would otherwise be landfilled or destroyed, are enormously powerful for literacy, and go to at-risk readers who have little or no access to books or computers at home.
With financial and logistics support from backers like Quad, Urban Land Interest, and the Atrium Apparel Company, and consumers, and hundreds of volunteers, MagLiteracy.org repacks magazines for delivery to literacy programs.
For local deliveries, agencies pick up magazines at our facilities, and volunteers pack their cars to bring literacy boxes to programs for readers.
MagLiteracy.org also sets up literacy newsstands in food pantries, schools and other locations, and hands out bundles of magazines to families picking up emergency food at food banks.
