In celebration of National Family Literacy Month this November, we teamed up with online retailer zulily to provide books to children in need across the U.S. As part of zulily’s sixth annual holiday giving “Books for Kids Buy 1, Give 1” campaign, each Penguin Random House book purchased will trigger a donation – up to 75,000 books – to longtime partner First Book. The largest and fastest-growing network of educators in the United States exclusively serving kids in need, First Book is a nonprofit organization that aims to remove barriers to quality education for all kids by making new books, educational materials and other essentials affordable to its member network of more than 500,000 educators. We’re proud to partner with Zulily to provide children with the gift of reading this holiday season.
Regions: U.S.
Supporting Women Climate Leaders Through Community
As part of our ongoing efforts to help protect the planet and its future, we are proud to support the All We Can Save Project. Created by the editors of One World’s ALL WE CAN SAVE: Truth, Courage and Solutions for the Climate Crisis, Dr. Ayana Johnson and Dr. Katharine Wilkinson, and inspired by the anthology, the new initiative will accelerate the success of the climate movement by providing support and community for women climate leaders — scientists, journalists, farmers, lawyers, teachers, activists, innovators, wonks, and designers — across generations, geographies, and race.
The All We Can Save Project will hold virtual and in-person programs; provide education and engagement; and direct financial support to cohorts of women climate leaders with the goal of championing a more representative, nuanced, and solution-oriented public conversation on the climate crisis. One of the most crucial issues of our lifetime, it’s imperative that we acknowledge the intersectionality of environmental injustice with racial, social, and political inequities. We hope the All We Can Save Project will empower women climate leaders in profound and impactful ways to continue to care for our planet and its inhabitants.
Sponsoring CLMP’s First Annual Black Literary Award
We are excited to be the inaugural sponsors of the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses’ first annual Black Literary Award to support the ongoing work of Black-led presses and presses who champion BIPOC authors. Recipients of CLMP’s award will receive $10,000 grants and will be announced in spring 2021.
At Penguin Random House, we’re committed to fostering a literary landscape that’s truly diverse, where emerging and underrepresented writers are recognized. Grants like the Black Literary Publishing Award help ensure new voices and perspectives are heard. In support CLMP’s 50-year legacy of elevating emerging writers through small, independent publishers, we’re honored to help make it possible for them to launch this important initiative and secure its future.
Mentoring Public School Students in NYC
Since 1997, we have partnered with Read Ahead in New York City to match public school students with Penguin Random House employee volunteers for one-on-one mentorship. Read Ahead is dedicated to helping students unlock their full potential through mentoring relationships, fostering the social and emotional skills that are essential for academic and life-long success. Penguin Random House volunteers offer one-on-one support to NYC public school mentees in grades K-5 throughout the school year, helping them develop their love of reading, confidence, and skills to thrive in school and beyond.
Starting in 2020, we expanded the program to all of our U.S. employees through a virtual mentorship program hosted on Zoom. We’re honored to continue our partnership with Read Ahead and provide their students with engaged Penguin Random House mentors from across the country.
Launching the 2021 Creative Writing Awards
For the second consecutive year, we will partner with We Need Diverse Books for PRH’s annual Creative Writing Awards Program to widen the applicant pool beyond New York City and invite hundreds of students from across the country to submit their work. Our partnership with WNDB underscores a critical element of the CWA program: to nurture the next generation of literary talent by supporting young writers from a variety of backgrounds. As the publishing industry continues to reckon with issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion, the CWA program is an opportunity for PRH to support students from underrepresented backgrounds and encourage their involvement in the field. This program is one facet of our continued effort to elevate diverse perspectives and increase representation among our authors and staff.
The 2021 competition launches on December 2, and closes on March 2, 2021. Five first-place $10,000 prizes will be awarded in the categories of fiction/drama; poetry; personal essay/memoir; and spoken-word poetry, through the Maya Angelou Award. In recognition of the Creative Writing Awards previously being centered in New York City, the competition will award an additional first-place prize to the top entrant from the NYC area. Runners up will also be honored.
Established in 1993, the Penguin Random House Creative Writing Awards have awarded more than $2.8 million dollars to public high school students for their original compositions. To learn more about the program, please click here.
Books Give More Campaign
As part of our 2020 holiday campaign, Books Give More, we’ll donate one book to longtime partner We Need Diverse Books for every book purchased on penguinrandomhouse.com from October 20, 2020 through Giving Tuesday (December 1, 2020). During these unprecedented times, books are more important than ever, providing safe and accessible entertainment, and promoting a deeper understanding of the issues facing our community and country. Through our partnership with We Need Diverse Books this holiday season, we’ll be able to put more books into the hands of all children in economically disadvantaged schools around the country, helping to address the literacy gap that affects marginalized youth by giving children stories and authors they can relate to.
Penguin Random House U.S. is proud to partner with We Need Diverse Books for ongoing programs like our annual Creative Writing Awards.
Bringing Books to Families with the L.A. Dodgers
Throughout the year, the Dodgers Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities program typically hosts Dodger Days as community-based resource fairs at local parks for thousands of kids and their families in Southern California. In response to COVID-19, the new “drive-thru” series is an adjustment from its in-person format. The Los Angeles Dodgers Foundation (LADF) conducted a needs assessment with the Dodgers RBI families, their youth development program for 5 to 18-year-olds. Of the youth currently enrolled in this program, 25% have household incomes below $20,000 annually. Through this assessment, they found that the majority of families indicated lack of access to books as a barrier to distance learning.
The LADF hosted five drive-thru events in June, providing over $480,000 in food boxes, exercise and fitness resources, softball and baseball equipment, books, and educational support to feed families and help youth stay active and healthy.
Penguin Random House donated 500 books that were given away to attending families for their children.
Through the LADF, the Dodgers have been providing critical donations to support the local COVID-19 relief efforts that will hopefully uplift significantly impacted Angelenos, including the most vulnerable populations. In 2017, PRH also partnered with the L.A. Dodgers and LADF on their joint initiative, LA Reads, to help address the literacy crisis in Los Angeles, by getting children excited about reading, with a special event at the Los Angeles Central Library.
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.
PRH Featured on CNN
Penguin Random House’s donation of 750,000 books to First Book as part of READ TOGETHER, BE TOGETHER is featured on CNN International’s “Impact Your World” series. This special series showcases how companies around the world are giving back during the COVID-19 crisis.
This donation is one of the many ways Penguin Random House is helping communities affected by the pandemic. To meet the urgent need expressed by educators coping with school closures as a result of COVID-19, the donated books will be sent to programs and schools that are currently delivering books, food, and supplies to our youngest citizens who are isolated and locked out of a learning environment.
See the video on CNN here.
Our Approach to Diversity, Equity & Inclusion
As Penguin Random House, we hold a collective belief that diverse voices need to be elevated and heard. Externally, we are committed to using our platform to amplify an even broader range of voices. Internally, we are working to build an equitable, inclusive, and psychologically safe work environment for all employees.
We are guided by five core pillars that shape our DE&I efforts across the business.
Leadership Investment in DE&I: Effective leadership is at the core of systemic change and we are investing in that change through unconscious bias, antiracism, and inclusivity training. We hold leaders accountable for implementing our s DE&I vision, setting goals, achieving results, and being role models.
Diversity & Representation: We are committed to making our employee population more representative of our society by ensuring that attraction, sourcing, and recruitment is done through a DE&I lens.
Career Growth: Diversity, equity and inclusion is crucial to the development of all employees to ensure they are prepared, supported, and well-situated in how to advocate for their career paths. We integrate DE&I into talent development, performance management, advancement, and retention efforts.
Psychological Safety and Belonging: We seek to create a more psychologically safe, inclusive environment that allows employees to bring their full selves to work and voice their ideas and opinions openly.
Content & Marketplace: We are committed to increasing the number of books we publish, promote, and sell by people of color with the ultimate goal of publishing books that reflect the world we live in.
While these pillars have advanced our progress in establishing more inclusive business practices, there is still much more important work to do. Together with our Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Councils, Employee Resource Groups, and leadership teams, we will continue our ongoing and evolving plan for action to achieve our aspiration of creating a more equitable company and publishing community.