Diversity, Equity & Inclusion

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Our Commitments in Action

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Supporting Black Creators Through the Black Creatives Fund

U.S.
Commitments

Supporting Black Creators Through the Black Creatives Fund

Together with We Need Diverse Books (WNDB), we launched the Black Creatives Fund in February 2021, an initiative with a mission of supporting emerging and established Black writers and illustrators. Penguin Random House is the inaugural sponsor of the fund for the 2021 year. 

The Black Creatives Fund will feature three initiatives in 2021, including a Revisions Workshop, a mentorship program, and a marketing symposia in partnership with the Brown Bookshelf. The Fund will launch with the six-month Revisions Workshop that will support unpublished Black writers with completed manuscripts and feature esteemed faculty including our authors Nic Stone and Jewell Parker Rhodes.

Twelve writers selected for the workshop will have the opportunity to receive guidance throughout the revision process and submit their manuscript to editors at Penguin Random House for possible publication. All 12 writers will be awarded stipends. Two finalists will receive larger grants, and publishing deals for top performers will be strongly considered. 

As longtime partners of WNDB, we are honored to collaborate with them to build this important new pipeline for discovering and elevating Black voices. The Black Creatives Fund is an integral piece of Amplify Black Stories, our year-long campaign to celebrate Black authors and introduce their stories to a diverse group of readers. For more information, please visit the Black Creatives Fund program page.

Worldwide

All In

REAFFIRMING OUR COMMITMENT


Voicing our continued support of the Paris Agreement, we signed the “All In” climate statement calling for America’s national mobilization on climate action and clean, equitable recovery.
U.K.

£60,000

DONATED


Penguin Random House U.K. donated £60,000 to the Book Trade Charity fundraiser to support booksellers in the U.K. and Ireland experiencing hardship due to COVID-19.
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Giving Thanks to Healthcare Workers

SPAIN
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Giving Thanks to Healthcare Workers

This year on Sant Jordi Day, we donated more than 4,000 books to hospitals, hotels, and support centers housing healthcare workers fighting COVID-19. At the time, Spain was facing its highest peak of infections of deaths due to COVID-19, and this donation aimed to help pass the time for those in isolation and to express our gratitude to the medical teams for their bravery and hard work.

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Providing Books for Children of Essential Workers

CANADA
Commitments

Providing Books for Children of Essential Workers

During the COVID-19 pandemic, we donated 100 children’s books All About Kids, a Toronto daycare center, so that they could safely provide reading material for the children of essential workers in their care—enough to make sure that the kids would still have something to read while used books were thoroughly sanitized before returning to the rotation.

AUSTRALIA

$100,000

DONATED TO THE INDIGENOUS LITERACY FOUNDATION


For three years, Penguin Random House Australia partnered with the Indigenous Literacy Foundation to host 11 students in its offices in Sydney.
U.S.

23.2 Million

BOOKS DONATED


Penguin Random House U.S. has donated more than 23.2 million books since 2014, the company’s first full year as PRH.
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Partnership to Build Access to Education

INDIA
Commitments

Partnership to Build Access to Education

In 2019, we partnered with Agrasar, a Gurugram-based NGO that works with disadvantaged communities in India, and the Community Library Project, a Delhi-based reading project for children that focuses on building community libraries in the country. Their Learning Program is a low-cost, volunteer-driven citizen initiative. They work with disadvantaged communities, especially children, providing them access to a range of books and encouraging reading. We sponsored a reading fluency program for approximately 150 children from local village areas, helping them enhance their speed and reading accuracy, thereby honing their creative imagination and reading skills. This enabled kids to be more confident readers, accelerate their reading rate, and enjoy longer and more complex books. The children’s progress exceeded expectations in both fluency and accuracy. Many readers became skilled and confident to read longer, more age-appropriate books.

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Increased Climate Neutral Book Production

GERMANY
Commitments

Increased Climate Neutral Book Production

In 2020, we are committed to stepping up our climate protection activities and annually increase our climate-neutral book production by 20 percent. Our Munich headquarters has been climate-neutral since 2019; we have reduced our emissions where possible and offset all unavoidable emissions. By the end of 2020, the entirety of book production at all our children’s publishers will be climate-neutral, and our other group publishers will be producing more and more titles in climate-neutral ways, helping us achieve our goal of a 20 percent annual increase in climate-neutral book production across our publishers.

Worldwide

Climate Neutral

BY 2030


Penguin Random House will be Climate Neutral by 2030.
U.S.

$2.7 Million

COLLEGE SCHOLARSHIPS AWARDED


Since 1993, Penguin Random House U.S. has been awarding high school students scholarships through its Creative Writing Awards.
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Celebrating World Book Day

SOUTH AFRICA
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Celebrating World Book Day

In honor of World Book Day, we celebrated with Orange Grove Primary School in Johannesburg as part of our ongoing campaign to assist young readers with access to books. Through discussions with the school’s volunteer librarian, we learned that each class typically lines up outside the library during breaks to borrow a book. We donated more than 600 books, as well as treats for everyone, and we committed to installing new bookshelves in their library. World Book Day, of course, wouldn’t be complete without authors, and we were joined by author/illustrator combo Elaine Macdonald and Vanessa Mearns (I See an Elephant) as well as author Refiloe Moahloli (How Many Ways Can You Say Hello?), who came to read to the students.


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Diversity, Equity & Inclusion


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Our Awards


U.S. Creative Writing Awards


U.S. Library Awards for Innovation


U.S. Teacher Awards for Literacy

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