Corporate engagement
Centrally, we renewed Pearson’s membership of the Media CSR Forum, the Corporate Responsibility Group and Business in the Community, formed new partnerships with Justmeans and funded our annual corporate Christmas card through the UK charity Crisis, donating £20,000 to support the homeless. In partnership with UK charity Booktrust and the Department for Children, Schools and Families, Pearson gave out over 750,000 free Booktime book packs to every child starting school in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland this year, each containing Ed Vere’s Mr Big. Children in England also received the Booktime Book of Fantastic First Poems, edited by June Crebbin. We continued our support of Book Aid International’s East Africa Reading Tents Project, helping to send nearly 17,000 books for 36 tents in Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya, in which 7,326 children and 1,208 adults – including 552 teachers – participated. Each of the three business groups that constitute Pearson receive a charity budget from Pearson plc, which is usually also supplemented from their own coffers and substantial levels of staff fundraising.
Media Literacy Campaign
As a member of the Media CSR Forum, Pearson submitted case studies from the FT and Penguin on how we work with our audience and use internal procedures to ensure credible information. The launch of the campaign will be held in March 2010.
FT Rainforest
The Financial Times joined forces with the Pearson Foundation and Children’s Tropical Forests UK (CTF) to invest in and raise funds for the purchase and protection of a substantial area of primary tropical rainforest in Guanacaste, Costa Rica. Together with CTF, we will be calling upon our readers and others to help us raise funds to expand the FT Rainforest to a target area of 100 hectares, the equivalent of 161 football pitches or 60,000 trees, protecting 30,000 metric tonnes of carbon and 130 indigenous species of plants, birds, animals and insects in perpetuity.
Ladybird’s Reading Dads’ Campaign
Ladybird invited dads to upload footage of themselves reading aloud to their children as part of a Reading Idols competition to raise awareness as to the importance of fathers getting involved in reading at home.
Building on the success of last year’s UK event, the Penguin Group staged its first global Penguin Walk, involving over 1,000 staff members around the world to raise funds for the UN Environmental Programme’s ‘Plant a Billion Trees’ campaign and develop our 96-acre Penguin Wood in the UK. The walkers raised over £56,000, enabling just over 55,000 trees to be planted across the world.
Unicorn Theatre The FT has supported the Unicorn Theatre, Britain’s flagship children’s theatre in London for a number of years. The theatre hosts Unicorn Access performances, pioneering ways of making theatre accessible to children with sensory impairments and profound multiple learning difficulties.
Family Book Night
The Pearson Foundation Family Book Night programme has been introduced by Maskew Miller Longman and Longman in Southern Africa, helping to bring families together to show the importance of reading at home.
A few words from: Tom Glover
“We take appropriate responsibility for the impact of all our business activities, whether locally or globally.”
Acting Global Director for Communications, FT Group
The FT has a role in raising global awareness of important social and environmental issues to society at large, but also in engaging with our staff, customers and broader stakeholders and partners to ensure that we take appropriate responsibility for the impact of all our business activities, whether locally or globally.
Some highlights from 2009 include FT staff selecting Room to Read as our seasonal appeal partner and the raising of a record $4.3m through FT reader and corporate matching donations. This sum was sufficient to provide access to quality educational programmes for more than 173,000 children in the developing world, based on its average cost of $25 for reaching a child.
We have also joined forces with the Pearson Foundation and Children’s Tropical Forests UK to invest in and raise funds for the purchase and protection of a substantial area of primary tropical rainforest in Costa Rica. We are calling upon individuals, staff, customers, clients, and readers to help raise funds to expand the FT Rainforest to an initial target area of 100 hectares, the equivalent of 161 football pitches or 60,000 trees which would protect 30,000 metric tonnes of carbon in perpetuity.
Fast fact:
Penguin Group staff fundraising
Penguin Group UK staff raised more than £66,000 in 2009 (not including company matched funds), benefiting charitable groups for health (£21,000), social welfare (£15,000), education (£4,300), the arts and emergency relief. Penguin Group International staff raised more than $122,000 (US) in 2009 (not including company matched funds).