U.S. (2019)
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.
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.
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.
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.
INDIA (2019)
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.
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.
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.
CANADA (2020)
We partnered with Bell Let’s Talk in Canada, a program that promotes mental health awareness, to host a free public panel about writing, reading, and mental health. The panel was moderated by Dr. David Goldbloom, director of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) Foundation Board, and featured writers Don Gillmor, Jael Richardson, and Yasuko Thanh. A display in our Penguin Shop allowed employees, authors, and guests to share their own messages about wellness and mental health and discover related books. In 2020, our second Mental Health Awareness Month focused on in-house sessions promoting employee well-being, including a Drop Everything and Read event that encouraged everyone to take a break from their computers and enjoy a good book, with free health and wellness titles on offer to staff. To learn more, click here and here.
We engaged award-winning leadership and diversity expert Ritu Bhasin (author of The Authenticity Principle and president of bhasin consulting inc.) as our diversity and inclusion consultant. Together with Bhasin, we are working to create a forward-facing diversity and inclusion strategy. We kicked off these efforts with the introduction of cultural competence and anti-bias training, which has so far been delivered to more than a third of our employees, including all those in leadership positions.
