In January 2019, we partnered with the American Library Association to create the Penguin Random House Library Award for Innovation. The award recognizes the libraries and staff who have overcome hardship and adversity to creative lasting innovative community service programs that inspire and connect with readers. It awards $10,000 to a principal awardee and four runners-up $1,000 worth of Penguin Random House titles each. To learn more, click here. To learn more about our previous winners and how to apply for this year’s award, click here.
Commitments: Free Expression & Joy of Reading
#BookstoresAreHolidays with Binc
In December 2019, we partnered with the Book Industry Charitable Foundation (Binc) on their year-end fundraising campaign. Launched on Small Business Saturday and running through December 31, 2019, we matched all donations made to Binc, up to $15,000. In addition, we also donated $1 for every social media post on Instagram and Twitter that used the hashtag #BookstoresAreHolidays. Binc assists booksellers who have been impacted by disasters or personal financial hardships, and, by November, the Foundation had already assisted 90 booksellers and their families in 2019. The total of $30,000 raised by the end of the year helped at least 13 additional booksellers and their families through economic hardship. To learn more about the campaign, click here and here.
#BannedTogether for Banned Books Week
We are unwavering in our support of writers who seek out truth in their stories, and the readers who embrace them. We commemorate Banned Books Week in September annually, and in 2019 we were thrilled to be #BannedTogether. For every Penguin Random House book purchased during Banned Books Week, we donated $1 to the American Booksellers for Free Expression, up to $20,000. To learn more about our 2019 campaign, click here.
Puffin World of Stories: Re-imaging Libraries
Libraries are suffering from a chronic lack of investment – 44% of schools serving the U.K.’s most disadvantaged communities do not have a school library. So far, we’ve worked with 139 primary schools, supporting them to transform their libraries and reading spaces into hubs of creativity and imagination. We’ve reached over 30,000 pupils, and donated more than 50,000 books and trained over 200 teachers. We’re excited to expand Puffin World of Stories to 80 more schools from September 2020. To learn more, click here.
Equipping Young People for the Future
Penguin Talks is a program of free creative talks for young people across the U.K. and Ireland. Attendees are given the opportunity to hear from and ask questions to a world-renowned thinker, writer, or influential figure from our family of authors. Held in local schools, Penguin Talks is meant to help equip students by introducing them to new ideas and perspectives. Each Penguin Talk is published in full online, together with free curriculum-based resources for teachers, in order to enable young people in classrooms to engage with the themes and issues discussed. Former Penguin Talks have included Michelle Obama speaking on the power of education and self-belief, Yuval Noah Harari on the future of the world of work, and Margaret Atwood on protest and activism. To learn more about the program, click here.
Volunteer Effort for World Book Day
Every year on World Book Day colleagues across the U.K. come together to celebrate the power of reading with children in their local communities. In 2020, we had our largest ever single volunteering effort, as more than 500 colleagues volunteered in literacy-vulnerable areas. We hosted interactive sessions with more 6,000 people in more than 221 schools, nurseries, and community settings including prisons and homeless shelters including storytelling with little ones and a ‘reverse book club’ with adults. To learn more about our volunteer effort, click here.
Student Design Awards
Launched in 2006, the Student Design Awards aim to find the next generation of book cover designers. Giving students the opportunity to work with real cover design briefs firsthand, the competition asks participants to reimagine iconic book covers across the award’s three categories: Adult Fiction, Adult Nonfiction, and Children’s. The winner is awarded within our design teams as well as a cash prize of £1,000. To learn more about the award, click here. To learn more about our 2019 winners, click here.
#HappyReading Pop-Up Shop
In March 2019, Penguin Classics launched its #HappyReading pop-up shop in Shoreditch in East London, as part of a campaign to celebrate the joy of reading and the special books that impact our lives. We partnered with the National Literacy Trust to run two workshops as part of the pop-up’s weeklong program of events. The workshops gave students an opportunity to discuss reading for pleasure, meet with working role models from Penguin, and develop valuable skills. Over two days, 50 students participated in the workshops, which we helped facilitate with volunteers from across our various divisions and departments. To learn more about the pop-up, click here and here.
Free Books at Shakespeare in the Park
We have been a longtime supporter of Shakespeare in the Park, one of the cornerstones of the Public Theater’s mission to bring performing arts to New Yorkers. Since 1962, more than 5 million people have experienced more than 150 free productions of Shakespeare’s work and other classical works and musicals. We have supported the Public Theater through monetary donations, as well as by distributing free books to theatergoers waiting in line for tickets. Throughout the years, this has become one of our most popular volunteering opportunities, and many of our bestsellers have been gifted to eager readers. To learn more, click here.
Celebrating World Book Day
In honor of World Book Day, we celebrated with Orange Grove Primary School in Johannesburg as part of our ongoing campaign to assist young readers with access to books. Through discussions with the school’s volunteer librarian, we learned that each class typically lines up outside the library during breaks to borrow a book. We donated more than 600 books, as well as treats for everyone, and we committed to installing new bookshelves in their library. World Book Day, of course, wouldn’t be complete without authors, and we were joined by author/illustrator combo Elaine Macdonald and Vanessa Mearns (I See an Elephant) as well as author Refiloe Moahloli (How Many Ways Can You Say Hello?), who came to read to the students.