In 2019, we partnered with Special Olympics and the American Library Association to participate in a pilot program to support Special Olympics Young Athletes (SOYA). SOYA is a sport and play program for children aged 2 to 7 with and without intellectual disabilities, where kids learn sports, such as running and throwing, as well as social skills, such as sharing, being team players, and following instructions. SOYA also helps support families, teachers, and caregivers in order to bring inclusive learning and play to communities across the country. To help continue this engagement at home, we donated 500 copies of R. J. Palacio’s We’re All Wonders and 500 copies of Dr. Seuss’s The Sneetches, which were included in special Young Athletes backpacks at participating libraries. To learn more, click here.
Commitments: Diversity & Inclusion
Creative Writing Awards for Students
One of our signature programs to identify and celebrate emerging writers since 1993, the Creative Writing Awards is part of our ongoing commitment to promote diverse voices and stories. Creative Writing Award winners have gone on to become professional and award-winning writers. In 2019, we partnered with We Need Diverse Books to expand the scholarship program nationally and award high school seniors with $10,000 college scholarships for their winning entries. The winners met with author Natasha Díaz, editors, and other publishing professionals before reading their work at an awards ceremony at our headquarters in New York City. To learn more about the program and our recent winners, click here.
Support for Blind and Print-Disabled Readers
We partnered with the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB), signing up to support two of the charity’s programs, RNIB Bookshare, which provides free access to books for print-disabled learners, and Talking Books, which provides specially adapted audio versions of books. This partnership allows the RNIB free access to tens of thousands of Penguin Random House titles and all of its audiobooks, and is part of our efforts to make our books more inclusive and accessible. We have also given free access for all of our books to be reproduced by RNIB in large-print and braille formats, as well as ensured that all newly published eBooks meet high standards of accessibility. To learn more, click here.
Sponsorship of the Spare Room Project
The Spare Room Project aims to address the lack of regional diversity in the industry by providing housing to interns and people working who come from outside London. In 2018 we started sponsoring the project, which matches interns with hosts working in publishing who can offer a spare room or a bed for free for one week. A practical way to help open doors to a more diverse range of people, the Spare Room Project looks for hosts from across the publishing industry, from those in Editorial and Sales to agents and authors. To learn more about the Spare Room Project, click here. To learn more our sponsorship, click here.
Pop-Up Bookshop to Celebrate Women
In 2018, we celebrated International Women’s Day and the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage in the U.K. with a pop-up bookshop, the Like a Woman Bookshop, that exclusively sold books written by women authors. We wanted to celebrate the persistence of women who have fought for change #LikeAWoman. The bookshop featured inspiring and iconic writers such as Margaret Atwood, Iris Murdoch, Zadie Smith, and Malala Yousafzai. Shoppers also had the chance to purchase books to be donated to Solace Women’s Aid, a charity that provides practical and emotional support to survivors of domestic violence. To learn more, click here and here.
Nurturing Writers From Underrepresented Backgrounds
We launched our WriteNow program in 2016, and we’re proud to say that, to date, 450 writers have attended 9 regional events, 33 writers have joined our yearlong mentorship program, and 12 books have, thus far, been acquired through the program. Through WriteNow, we host free workshops offering information about how to get published to unpublished writers based in the U.K. and Ireland who identify as coming from an underrepresented background or community. Participants are able to hear from published authors and literary agents and receive personalized feedback on their work from an editor. The most promising writers are accepted into our yearlong mentoring program, where they are paired with one of our editors to help develop their manuscript with the ultimate aim of publishing their work. To learn more, click here.
Committed Allyship with Our LGBTQIA+ Community
The Penguin Random House LGBTQ+ Network was created in 2013 and aspires to create community among the LGBTQIA+ individuals at Penguin Random House by providing a supportive environment to all employees who share the common idea of nurturing workplace diversity, creating a forum for professional and social opportunities, and aiming to increase awareness of LGBTQIA+ issues, authors, and books.
The Women’s Library with SheThePeople
In collaboration with SheThePeople, India’s first women’s channel inspired by real stories about and by women, in March 2019 we launched the Women’s Library, a monthlong campaign to showcase women’s writing and the impact that women-led writing can have on reading and in people’s daily lives. We curated a selection of work by leading women writers, domestically and internationally, making them available in bookstores across India. To learn more, click here and here.
Reading Sessions with Children’s Hospital Patients
An essential part of our social impact work is strengthening the relationships we have with our communities, and we know that reading is an essential part of a happy, full, and healthy life. For more than four years, Penguin Random House Grupo Editorial Mexico has maintained a partnership with the Juan N. Navarro Children’s Psychiatric Hospital of Mexico City–the only psychiatric hospital for children in all of Latin America—to collaborate in the recovery of the patients. A team of approximately 50 colleagues participates in weekly sessions with the hospital’s patients to help exercise the children’s imagination, understanding, and empathy through reading.
Cuida’m Program
Since 2008, Penguin Random House Grupo Editorial has sponsored 11 children to receive critical medical treatment as part of the Cuida’m Program of the Foundation of the Hospital Sant Joan de Déu. The Cuida’m program is an initiative to support and care for children inflicted with serious medical ailments who are unable to access the care they need due to lack of technical resources in their countries of origin. The objective of this initiative is for the children to return home with the best possible quality of life. By matching employee donations, we have donated about 10,000 euros annually to help cover the medical costs and lodging of each child and their family members while they are in Spain.