Regions: CANADA

Planting Trees to Support Canadian Conservation Efforts

CANADA (2025)

In support of Greater Toronto Area conservation efforts, Penguin Random House Canada employees from our Toronto office came together to plant over 425 trees and shrubs. In addition to increasing biodiversity in the area, these plants will help filter water in a nearby creek and draw in food—namely mosquitoes—for the endangered redside dace, a species of North American minnow.

PRHC Design Award and Portfolio Review

CANADA (2024)

To remove barriers of entry to the publishing industry, our award-winning design team at Penguin Random House Canada (PRHC) launched two initiatives aimed at up-and-coming artists and designers: the PRHC Design Award and the PRHC Portfolio Review for Emerging Creatives.  

The PRHC Design Award provides the opportunity for one selected winner to receive mentorship from PRHC’s in-house design team, consisting of six hour-long sessions over a period of six months.  

The PRHC Portfolio Review for Emerging Creatives invites selected participants to a session where emerging artists and designers can receive feedback on their portfolios from our award-winning design team.

Reducing Waste with Book Donations

CANADA (2024)

Penguin Random House donated over 300,000 books as in-kind donations to charities and programs like First Book Canada, Book Clubs for Inmates, Save the Children, SickKids, and more in 2024. Most of these donations came from returns or overstock, contributing to our ongoing sustainability efforts by reducing waste and spreading the joy of reading by putting books in the hands of those in need. 

Sponsoring Accessibility at Word on the Street

TORONTO, CANADA (2024)

Penguin Random House’s sponsorship of Word on the Street, a Toronto-based literary festival, helped provide necessary support to festival attendees in the form of barrier-free access, ASL interpreters, and live captioning of events. In conjunction with this sponsorship, we authored an interview with local booksellers on the importance of accessibility at book events and in publishing at large, in an effort to inspire continuing conversations around accessibility across the industry. 

Supporting Indigenous Future Professionals

CANADA (2022)

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. 

Stocking Classroom Shelves with Jays Care

CANADA (2021)

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.

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.