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.
Commitments: Free Expression & Joy of Reading
Support for the Toronto Public Library
We support the Toronto Public Library (TPL)—the world’s busiest urban public library system—through contributions to their Foundation, including a recent donation toward the construction of the new Jack Rabinovitch Reading Room. Rabinovitch founded the Giller Prize in 1994 to recognize excellence in Canadian literature, and, after he passed away in 2017, his family generously donated his extensive personal library to the TPL. This new 2,500 square-foot reading room will house the collection, making this diverse and important body of Canadian literature accessible to the public and providing a space for authors to read and work. In addition to this donation, we are also proud to support the TPL with contributions to their community bookmobiles, after-school programs for youth, and author readings.
Supporting Food Banks at the Toronto Public Library
After the Toronto Public Library’s branches were closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a number of locations were repurposed to serve as pop-up food banks. We joined forces with the Toronto Public Library Foundation to help add kids’ books to the food hampers being distributed there for young readers who are without Internet or library access while schools and branches remain closed, as well as donated books for distribution to families in shelters. In total, we donated 2,000 books for young readers as part of a matching campaign that saw us pledge 500 books for every 500 books the Foundation purchased using donations from members of the public.
Thanking Nurses During the COVID-19 Crisis
In honor of National Nursing Week in May and the World Health Organization’s designation of 2020 as the International Year of the Nurse, we joined forces with Registered Practical Nurses Association of Ontario (WeRPN) to send a message of thanks to nurses in our home province for their heroic work on the front lines of the COVID-19 crisis caring for the sick and vulnerable and protecting the health of our communities. Working together with beloved Canadian author Margaret Atwood, we contributed copies of her recent novel, The Testaments, to be included in care packages that went out to WeRPN’s more than 13,000 members, which also contained gifts of tea, treats, and lotion from other major brand partners. To learn more about our recognition of nurses, click here.
Getting Books to Families with First Book Canada
In 2020, we continued our long-standing partnership with First Book Canada with a special focus on getting books to families, both before and after the COVID-19 pandemic. We donated more than 5,000 books to newcomer, refugee, and Indigenous families across Canada in support of national not-for-profit consortium Mothers Matter Centre’s sixth Adopt-a-Reader campaign, which challenged parents to read with their kids for 15 minutes a day for 15 days and logged nearly 9,000 hours of family reading time this year. When the pandemic struck, we worked with First Book Canada to deliver workbooks to families in Scarborough, Toronto, to help kids starting home-schooling, and have signed on to our partner’s campaign to get one million books to low-income families without home libraries or Internet access while schools and local libraries are closed due to COVID-19. To learn more about First Book Canada’s one-million-book campaign, click here.
DK U.S. Donates More Than 3,000 Books During Lockdown
Nurturing curiosity and supporting causes is a top priority for DK colleagues, and the U.S. team has made several book donations to organizations that promote literacy and serve a crucial role during the COVID-19 outbreak. We donated 2,000 books to First Book to support children affected by U.S. school closures, and gave 300 books to Bess the Book Bus, a Florida-based mobile literacy outreach, to be distributed across the country. Having recently visited the Lower East Side Girls Club, which helps girls and young women on the Lower East Side of New York City, we provided books to be included in care packages for members who may have lost their safe spaces because of the pandemic.
DK also supported two nonprofits in California. To encourage science education, we donated STEM-related titles to Community Resources for Science, which serves schools in low-income communities, and donated more than 500 books to Project Books and Blankies, which provides books to shelters, literacy and after-school programs, classrooms, libraries, and more.
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.
Birthday Celebration for Sudha Murty
In August 2019, we launched a monthlong integrated campaign to celebrate iconic bestselling writer Sudha Murty’s 69th birthday, highlighting not only her writing but also Murty herself. A literary gem, Murty writes about a variety of topics that are contextual and relatable, and we wanted to pay tribute to her written work and humanitarian spirit. We created a complete collection of all her books for adults and children called the Sudha Murty Library, donating several sets to five public libraries as well as to the Community Library Project, which establishes free community libraries in underserved communities. We also created special, exclusive collectibles to be sold at bookstores across India that showcased her books and decorated their shops to highlight the writer all month long. To learn more, click here.
An Anthology for Thought and Reflection
We published a collection of works about life in the time of COVID-19 with the “Corona und wir” (Corona and us) anthology. The contributions from the various renowned authors provide food for thought and moments of reflection on what we collectively felt and dealt with in the early months of the pandemic. The proceeds from the anthology will go to Sozialwerk des Deutschen Buchhandels e.V. The charity offers help to bookstores in need and promotes further education for young booksellers.
Nationwide Reading Aloud Day
In Germany, the nationwide Reading Aloud Day emphasizes the importance of reading aloud and inspiring children and adults alike through stories. We have been actively involved in the campaign since its inception, making Reading Aloud Day an important part of our commitment to promote reading in our communities. In 2019, we donated nearly 2,000 audiobooks as part of Reading Aloud Day, and around 100 employees and authors went throughout Germany to give away packages filled with books.