The Literacy Alliance
The Pearson Foundation’s Literacy Alliance provides leading corporations and nonprofit organizations interested in supporting early literacy with a way to make a difference in the lives of children. Together with these valued partners, the Pearson Foundation markets, coordinates, and manages donations for new children’s books from Pearson’s own Penguin Group, and matches these contributions dollar for dollar, effectively doubling the impact.
Literacy Alliance partners around the world can take advantage of this program by encouraging employees, customers, or constituents to make book donations through a campaign conducted in person—for example at company meetings or school functions--or via online extension of these same events. Recipients of the books are typically selected by the donating partner organization, though the Pearson Foundation is happy to work with Pearson Education and its many non-profit education partners to identify local school districts, libraries, and community centers that would benefit from a focused donation.
Working together with participating corporations and nonprofit organizations, the Pearson Foundatoin:
- Coordinates all of the details and setup necessary.
- Processes all cash, check, or secured Internet credit card donations.
- Matches all donations with new Penguin Group or Dorling Kindersley books.
- Manages personalized selections of books based on recipient need.
- Fulfills and ships books to designated recipients.
This effort is important because in many parts of the world today, literacy rates are still as low as 25 percent, and regular access to books is almost nonexistent. In the United States, for example,
- Low-income neighborhoods reveal a ratio of one age-appropriate book for every three hundred children.
- Over 80 percent of preschool and after-school programs serving children from low-income families have no age-appropriate books for their children.
- More than one million children drop out of schools each year, costing more than $240 billion in lost earnings, forgone tax revenues, and expenditures for social services.
The good news is that interested organizations and individuals have a way to positively impact these figures by donating books to deserving organizations right in their own community—donations effectively doubled by the matching participation of the Pearson Foundation.
