Magazine Literacy Bee

I am getting more and more excited about the real involvement stages of holding this drive. I have been planning and trying to get volunteers, donors, and charities in line for a few weeks now and I am really hoping everything comes together.

When we were finally able to sort out our computer woes and send an email to the Pace publishing community, students, faculty, and even some companies responded. All want to get involved on some level. This is wonderful news!

As the publishing community, I believe we should be aware of and involved with issues of literacy because reading is our industry. For me, reading has been so much more than just a tool to get by, it is a real pleasure, and I want to share that joy with others. My love for language is what brought me to publishing, and that is shared among professionals in the field. We should step up and help individuals struggling with words to see the potenial for language and reading as a way to expand their minds and as a fun activity.

I have been setting up contacts with charities this week as well, and hope to have that finalized very soon. There are four prospective literacy programs that I would like to have participate, but at this point I am unsure if all of them will do so. I am planning to run our drive in the local community November 1-29, so we are getting ready to approach sites this coming week. My next challenge is to find and decorate boxes!

Best,
Elizabeth

I know that when you organize a campaign such as this, you are bound to run into problems. My problem is my computer. I have the Vista operating system which is not compatible with many others. How is this relevant?

I sent off information about the magazine drive to the head of our department here at Pace last Friday to get the school officially involved. Nobody in the office was able to open the file I sent. I found this out when I emailed them to see if we would still be moving forward with the project. In effect, I have lost five valuable days of potential participation from my entire school department. It is still before the tentative dates that I would like to go full-force, but support from within would be a great help, and I will need some time to get volunteers signed up just to help with the orgainzational aspects, including scouting out sites, putting collection bins out, and getting the magazines ready to go.

I also spoke to one of my professors who works at Time, Inc. She will be looking into back issues and contact information for me, which could turn into a huge reserve of magazines. We shall see.

Take the good with the bad and always have a back-up plan!

Best,
Elizabeth

Hi! I have to admit that this is my first blog and I don't even know where to begin. I want it to be beneficial to many people and in many respects, so I guess I will just tell you a little about me and what I am trying to do in my community.

My name is Elizabeth, and I am a graduate student at Pace University in the MS Publishing program. When people ask me what this is, I explain it as a specialized business degree in the field of publishing. We learn about all aspects of business that make magazine and book companies successful, and now online content as well. (Blogs are actually a huge part of this!)

What I am aiming to do is host a KinderHarvest magazine drive for literacy in my area, which is New York City, and to do so very soon. At this point in time, it is just me. I have one other student in the program who plans to be involved. I won't mention this person yet, although I am very grateful to know that I have support waiting for me when I am ready to move forward. This will happen tomorrow, I believe.

I sat down and really gathered my thoughts tonight.

I think that what I did would help you if you want to start something like this in your area but are unsure of where to begin. I went to the KinderHarvest link on the Magazine Literacy website, magazineliteracy.org, where there is a helpful list of steps to start a drive. Then, I sat down and really applied these.

I researched programs in my area that would be good candidates to receive the magazines collected by the drive. One aspect that I love about this program is that the benefits stay local! I did not realize this until I sat down to pick out the charities our magazines would benefit. I tried to focus on programs that emphasize literacy promotion as part of their core philosophy; however, that is my personal choice.

Next, I thought of all the places where I would be likely to drop off extra magazines as potential collection sites because I frequent those places or because magazines are sold there. Supermarkets, bookstores, pharmacies, libraries, and local schools are givens. But what about Starbucks? Target? My campus bookstore? Doctors' and dentists' offices always have extra magazines. I could call them to see if volunteers could stop in and collect them.

I also had questions come to mind about this program that I felt are as of yet unanswered, but I was able to put a name to these questions, group them, write them out so that I know what answers I am seeking and whom to ask.

I will get more into that next time. I suppose this is a pretty good introduction of where things stand. I will say this. It is October 3rd. I hope to put this on the last two weeks of this month, and I believe that it will be organized and successful.

All the Best,
Elizabeth