In Canada, we committed to a multi-year sponsorship of Simon Fraser University’s Greg Younging Scholarship for an Indigenous student in the Masters of Publishing program at SFU. The scholarship aims to help eliminate the barriers Indigenous people face to entering and flourishing in the Canadian publishing industry, work that is fundamental to our commitment to building racial equity.
Regions: CANADA
Stocking Classroom Shelves with Jays Care
In Canada, we are proud to take part in Turn the Page, a multi-day event run in partnership with First Book Canada and Jays Care, the charitable arm of the Toronto Blue Jays baseball team. In December 2021, volunteers, including PRH Canada staff, put over 100,000 new books in the hands of over 400 educators for their students.
Partnering with Aesop on Queer Libraries in NYC, LA, and Toronto
In celebration of Pride Month, we with skincare brand Aesop to transform four of their retail locations in the United States and Canada into Queer Libraries. For a week in June, Aesop stores in New York, Los Angeles, and Toronto cleared the products from their shelves and replaced them with books that uplift the underrepresented voices and experiences of queer communities around the world, with a particular emphasis on BIPOC and trans authors.
Designed to spotlight LGBTQIA+ authors and to promote access to their works, the campaign invited all guests to take home a complimentary book of their choice, with no purchase required. As part of the initiative, Penguin Random House donated 2,350 titles to the collection. In solidarity with independent queer bookstores, Aesop also purchased more than 3,000 volumes from Glad Day Bookshop in Toronto and Women & Children First in Chicago.
“All In” Climate Statement
Celebrating International Literacy Day with Worldreader
Since 2010, Penguin Random House has donated more than 550,000 digital books to Worldreader to help children read in underserved schools across Sub-Saharan Africa. To celebrate International Literacy Day in 2020, we encouraged our readers to help bring more books to children. With every book purchased on our website, we donated $1 to Worldreader.
In these pictures, a classroom full of students in Kibera, Kenya eagerly reads. In their hands they’re holding a library of thousands of books – including lots of favorite Penguin Random House books. The ability to read and learn gives these students a chance to improve their lives. And that ripples through to their families and their communities. As Worldreader’s largest global publishing partner, we are proud to help advance literacy around the world. We have donated hundreds of licenses for Worldreader e-reader programs in sub-Saharan Africa, linking literature of all reading levels and age groups to schools and libraries throughout the region.
We proudly partner with Worldreader to help create a world where everyone is a reader.
Sparking Imaginations with the Raptors 905
Penguin Random House Canada is committed to doing our part to create a fairer society, including by promoting equitable access to meaningful and inspiring reading experiences for marginalized readers. In July 2020, we worked together with First Book Canada and the Raptors 905 basketball team to give one thousand copies of five books by Black authors, about Black characters, to two hundred grade five students in the team’s home region of Peel, Ontario. The kids will read one book a week for five weeks for a total of 905 minutes of reading, coming together at the end of each week to talk about what they’ve read with each other, the book’s author, and community leaders including representatives from Brampton’s Festival of Literary Diversity, with Raptors 905 Head Coach Jama Mahlalela leading the conversation. We’re grateful for the opportunity to help this group of young readers keep connected with each other, engaged with stories that reflect their own identities and experiences, and fired up by their imaginations this summer. To learn more about this program, click here.
Climate Neutral
Confronting Racism and Social Inequity
In response to protests against anti-Black racism following the murder of George Floyd, we looked inward to identify what part we play in the problem and, potentially, in the efforts to solve it. As publishers, we are dedicated to amplifying the voices of Black authors, but we know we need to do more to support the efforts for change they and other members of Black communities in Canada, as well as Indigenous and other marginalized communities, are leading. We created an anti-racism action and accountability plan to work toward a more diverse and truly inclusive company, industry, and society. As part of that plan, we made donations of $20,000 each to the Black Legal Action Centre, the Black Health Alliance, and the Nia Centre for the Arts, three Black-led organizations that work in the service of racial equity in their respective areas for members of Black communities in Toronto and nationwide. Beyond this crucial moment, we’re committed to providing ongoing support to organizations working in the area of anti-racism.