Supporting active citizenship
Corporate engagement
Each Pearson company is involved in a number of different initiatives at a variety of levels – from supporting local schools and colleges, to promoting and sponsoring conferences and initiatives with other organisations to raise awareness and foster dialogue on important issues for our times – each promoting literacy in one way or another. In 2008, we supported Book Aid International's Children's Reading Tents Project: touring reading tents held events in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, reaching over 9,000 children, with almost 20,000 books donated by Longman, Ladybird and DK imprints. Penguin UK continued to donate money and supply all the books given out by the Letterbox Club, which sends parcels of books and educational materials to foster children in the UK, many of whom will have never received a letter in their life. The pilot schemes have had such success that it is now being rolled out across the nation in 2009. As a company, we also renewed our membership of the Media CSR Forum, formed new partnerships with JustMeans and held our annual seasonal appeal in December for one major charity in the FT, featuring a series of articles online, in the newspaper and weekend magazine for almost two months.
Activity summary
America's Corporation for National and Community Service honoured Pearson with its annual Corporate Spirit of Service award for outstanding support of national service and volunteering.
We established Pearson Disaster Relief funds for staff wishing to make a personal contribution to aid the victims of the cyclone in Myanmar (Burma) and the earthquake in China in May 2008, also donating $200,000 through the Pearson Foundation to support relief efforts.
We ran our annual Pearson Community Awards for staff, during which people from all over Pearson were invited to tell us about their regular volunteering activities, both through office-run programmes and personal efforts. A panel of executives representing each business awarded a donation of $2,000 (or local equivalent) to the chosen charity of each winner.
Snapshots
New primary school in Afghanistan Penguin (USA) worked with the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and the United States Association for UNHCR to build a primary school in Afghanistan, which recently opened its doors to 270 students. The school is a tribute to American booksellers, librarians and educators who supported Khaled Hosseini's bestselling novels, The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns.
FT Seasonal Appeal The FT's 2008 seasonal appeal was in support of Water Aid, highlighting the charity's work in helping communities in Africa, Asia and the Pacific region to find sustainable water sources, sanitation and to provide hygiene education. As the appeal draws to its close, the final total of financial donations has reached £167,389. A total of 1,461 donations were made to the appeal with the highest being $25,000 from the Prem Rawat Foundation.
Student Sustainability Summits Pearson Higher Education and the Pearson Foundation has created a series of university-based, student driven events in the US, designed to foster sustainability projects, student leadership and media skills using digital film. The first was held in October 2008.
