Penguin Random House UK joins campaign to tackle nation’s literacy challenge in 2018

Penguin Random House UK is proud to be one of 63 businesses around the country who have signed the Vision for Literacy Pledge 2018 to tackle the nation’s growing literacy challenge.

This is the third consecutive year that Penguin Random House has signed the pledge, which was first launched in 2015 by a coalition led by the National Literacy Trust; reaffirming the publisher’s commitment to deliver the Read On. Get On. vision to help every child in the UK to read well by the age of 11.

With low literacy continuing to undermine the UK’s economic competitiveness, tackling it has never been more important to business. According to figures from KPMG, the literacy crisis costs the UK £2.5 billion each year, and, if not addressed, could cost the economy £32.1 billion by 2025. Alongside leading businesses including Amazon, Facebook, McDonald’s and the Premier League, Penguin Random House has committed to championing reading and literacy in its workforce, within its local communities and on a national scale, in order to address this crisis. 

Some of the ways in which Penguin Random House is supporting reading in its local communities and nationally include: 

• Continuing to provide funding to World Book Day, the annual celebration of books and reading. This year, colleagues across the business will also have the chance to volunteer their time in local schools and communities on the morning of World Book Day to celebrate the importance of books and reading
• 77 colleagues taking part in our volunteer reading programme, which sees them visit primary schools local to our sites each week and working one-to-one with a child struggling with their reading
• Supporting the Read North East campaign to raise children's literacy levels in the North East; donating over 3,000 books since the campaign’s launch in 2017
• Penguin Random House will donate 16,000 books to this year’s World Book Night, with eight books from our authors included amongst the World Book Night titles, including Elizabeth is Missing by Emma Healey, You Don’t Know Me by Imran Mahmood and My Name is Leon by Kit de Waal

In total, Penguin Random House will donate 500,000 books to charity by 2020 as part of its Creative Responsibility manifesto. We will work together with selected national and local partners to ensure our book donations have the greatest positive impact.

Jonathan Douglas, Director of the National Literacy Trust said: “Business has a crucial role to play in helping to raise literacy levels across the UK, increasing our economic competiveness and creating a fairer society. We are delighted that Penguin Random House is taking important action to help ensure that every young person is equipped with the literacy skills they need for employment and to have a successful life.”

To find out more about Penguin Random House’s commitment to helping every child in the UK to read well by the age of 11, click here

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