We give back to the communities we serve by providing donations and resources to charities and educational initiatives aligning to our mission. We also encourage our people to dedicate their time to supporting charitable initiatives through volunteering.
In 2022...
More than
books
donated worldwide
Over
GBP
donated to various charitable initiatives across the world*
Almost
hours
of volunteering logged by our colleagues
*As part of a charity ourselves, we are limited in the amount and type of donations we can give. In some of the regions in which we operate, supporting charities and educational initiatives is a legal requirement. For example, in India, businesses with annual revenues of more than 10bn rupees are required to give away 2% of their net profit to charity. In South Africa, corporate social investment (CSI) is a legal obligation in line with the BBBEE Act, requiring companies to set aside 1% of net profit after tax for CSI initiatives. The remainder of our charitable giving is discretionary. The amount we donate does not include the funds we transfer to the University each year.
Charitable giving
Every year we help to facilitate a range of charitable activities and make donations to extend the impact we have on our communities worldwide.
While most of our support is given to educational initiatives, we also donate to disaster relief or humanitarian disasters to support regions in which we operate, where possible.
- We donated 21,000 print and digital materials to schools we work with in parts of southern Türkiye that were affected by the earthquakes of February 2023. We also made a donation to the Disasters Emergency Committee's Türkiye-Syria Earthquake Appeal.
- As part of OUP Southern Africa’s partnership with AVBOB Mutual Assurance Society, this year we donated 130,000 books towards the inaugural Road to Literacy initiative.
- Our Developing Countries Initiative ensures that non-profit institutions in developing nations have access to critical research.
- Through our new Raise a Reader campaign, we visited ten locations across England with lower levels of literacy, providing parents with advice and free resources to support children in reading for pleasure. We also collaborated with the National Literacy Trust and joined the Primary School Library Alliance as a flagship partner, enabling schools in disadvantaged areas of Oxfordshire to set up their own reading spaces.
- In Hong Kong, we donated 3,000 books towards Ronald McDonald House Charities Hong Kong’s Read for Love programme, which recruits young readers to raise funds for hospitalized children.
- We provided ECHO with graded readers to help stock their multilingual lending library van, that helps refugees across Greece to learn English.
- We provided 1,000 books to SOLA—an Afghan-led boarding school for Afghan girls with a mission to build a generation of women with leadership skills—to help build a library for its temporary campus in Rwanda.
- We donated dictionaries to Warriors of Hope South Africa as part of their education programmes for children and adults from disadvantaged areas.
- In Australia, we provided educational material to BETTER, which aims to provide children in East Timor with better prospects through education.
- We donated eBooks to Cara’s Syria Programme to support exiled academics from Syria now living in Türkiye to carry out online lessons.
- OUP ANZ’s partnership with Skyline Education Foundation expanded to launch a workplace giving programme, which 22 colleagues participated in this year. We also provided internships for two Skyline students in our Publishing and Editorial teams.
- We donated excess marketing collateral to In Kind Direct, reaching 32 charitable organizations across the UK who cover a wide range of causes, from family welfare to supporting people with disabilities.
- We continued to support Thaki, an organization that gives refugee children access to computers with built-in digital educational resources. In 2022, 22,000 children accessed OUP content through Thaki to learn English.
Volunteering
Our people have two days of volunteering leave each year (three in the US), which they can dedicate towards supporting organizations that align to our mission.
Volunteering time can be taken in a variety of ways and can be taken virtually, in addition to in-person. This year, our colleagues spent almost 400 hours volunteering.
Highlights from this year include:
- Group Ethics & Compliance team members from 13 countries reunited in person for the first time since 2019 for its biennial conference. Colleagues got to stamp and pack 1,000 books for Book Aid International to distribute to communities in need worldwide.
- Colleagues in Hong Kong decorated, packed, and donated gift boxes for Box of Hope, bringing joy to children who wouldn’t normally receive a gift over the festive period.
- Through ARCh, colleagues spent time with children in schools across Oxfordshire to improve their reading skills.
- We continued to support The Orwell Youth Prize by reading entries and writing feedback on entrants’ submissions, as well as helping to shortlist entries for the judging panel.
- Through our Raise a Reader campaign, colleagues helped to transform spaces at ten schools across underserved communities in Oxfordshire in order to create inviting reading areas. Tasks involved tidying, stocking shelves, stamping books, and decorating the newly purposed libraries.
Case studies
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