Pearson’s Culture of Compassion

Response to Need and Crisis in the U.S.

Helping Recovery from Natural Disasters

In the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, one of the worst U.S. natural disasters, Pearson responded with financial assistance, people, and numerous resources. Our response serves as a model for our continuing outreach to help disaster victims whenever and wherever there is need; for example, last year’s Iowa floods, and hurricanes that hit the Southeast.

As the first details of the devastation were shared, Pearson people and businesses mobilized to provide support to Gulf Coast residents displaced by Hurricane Katrina. We reached out and helped with staffing for Red Cross phone banks and donated meals to hundreds of Red Cross volunteers. We provided our call centers to assist the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and to the Department of Health and Human Services for connecting with medical professionals volunteering to help.

Hundreds of our Pearson people temporarily left their jobs and volunteered in the Gulf area, created their own grassroots support, or brought hurricane victims to their homes in other parts of the U.S. Through the Pearson Foundation, we dispatched two Internet-connected “school buses,” which initially provided books, educational materials, and supplies to displaced teachers and students in Texas and Mississippi. Victims also used the Internet service to register for emergency services and to connect with relatives. As relocation began, these air-conditioned buses – equipped with digital learning programs like NovaNet and the Waterford Early Learning program – helped schools assess students’ abilities and provide personalized learning support.

In the months that followed, we helped schools from Plaquemines Parish to Bay St. Louis to re-open, providing temporary teaching support, school books, digital curriculum, computers, and satellite-based Internet access. And, through our School Systems business, we helped schools to retrieve data and get their business office operations back online. Perhaps one of the most rewarding accomplishments was the ability to offer high school seniors the opportunity to recover lost credits through the NovaNet program so they could graduate on time. Replacement texts were provided to college faculty and students who lost their books in Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

The following summer, we launched the Mobile Learning Institute summer program. In its first year, more than 500 middle school students from around the Gulf Coast took part in these innovative digital arts summer programs. Digital Arts Camp participants used the latest mobile phone and communications technologies to script and create digital films that combine their personal reactions to their experiences since Hurricane Katrina with their own specific recommendations for how parts of their cities, towns, and communities might be preserved or re-created as the region rebuilds. The films were donated to the Smithsonian Institution and to dozens of local Gulf Coast libraries, aired on National Geographic television, and used as the foundation for an ongoing connection to Gulf Coast schools that still exists today. This summer, we welcomed our 2,000th Gulf Coast student to the Mobile Learning Institute program, and we’re particularly proud that our connections to the people and schools we encountered immediately following Hurricane Katrina remain in place today.

Health Crisis/Support for Schools

When a number of New York City schools were closed down to contain the spread of the H1N1 flu virus in the spring of 2009, Pearson donated NovaNet digital courseware access for high school students, especially for those at risk of not graduating. A comprehensive national response plan is underway in anticipation of a possible pandemic outbreak in the 2009-2010 school year.

Helping Those Affected by Tragic Events

Following tragedies at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University and Northern Illinois University that resulted in numerous deaths, Pearson made significant donations to the memorial funds of those schools as a symbol of sympathy and support for faculty and students.

Support for Our U.S. Communities and Underserved Populations

Education is a Civil Right

With the National Alliance of Black School Educators (NABSE), Pearson provides a program that reaches out to all families to explore attitudes and experiences concerning education. In the fall of 2008, the Pearson Foundation launched the Education is a Civil Right Public Service Announcement competition for Los Angeles–area students. The Education is a Civil Right PSA Student Competition gives middle and high school students a chance to talk openly about the role that education plays in their lives. This year, the PSA program has expanded to classrooms in Atlanta, Chicago, and Washington, DC.

Exploring Humanitarian Law

With the American Red Cross, the Pearson Foundation created Exploring Humanitarian Law (EHL) a teacher curriculum produced by the International Committee of the Red Cross in collaboration with the American Red Cross. The EHL curriculum meets Social Studies Standards for high school, and it is integrated as part of basic education in secondary school curricula across the world. The primary intention of EHL is to help young people embrace the principles of humanity in their daily lives and in the way they assess events at home and abroad. The program includes active involvement in community service or other forms of engagement in favor of the most vulnerable members of society.

Facing History and Ourselves

Facing History and Ourselves helps students find meaning in the past and recognize the need for participation in society and responsible decision-making. The Pearson Foundation provides digital arts focused professional development workshops that present the Facing History and Ourselves genocide awareness curriculum for teachers in regional workshops across the United States. In specific Title 1 middle schools and high schools, the Pearson Foundation also supplies consistent access to wireless, mobile computing labs as part of the initiative.

National Academy Foundation (NAF) Collaboration Network

The Pearson Foundation is a proud sponsor of the National Academy Foundation, a national network of career academies that support the development of America’s youth toward personal and professional success in high school, in higher education, and throughout their careers. The Pearson Foundation has committed more than $2 million since 2004 to help NAF establish professional development and training materials that provide NAF the opportunity to articulate, document, and broadcast the exemplary teaching practices that underlie the success of NAF students.

The Literacy Alliance

The Literacy Alliance assists corporations, associations, and nonprofits in creating book donation and other literacy-related giving programs for their employees and members at conferences, events, and online. Working with our program partners, the Pearson Foundation matches contributions to the Literacy Alliance and arranges the donation of new books to communities and schools using the reach of Pearson to identify those that are most in need of help.

The Digital Arts Alliance

The Digital Arts Alliance delivers innovative educational experiences right to students and their teachers, providing fully funded and fully equipped digital arts programs to middle schools, high schools, and community centers across the United States. Working together to design, develop, and complete digital projects tied to their classroom objectives, students and educators achieve tangible results they can use immediately in their lives. Digital Arts Alliance partners include: Adobe, American Red Cross, Nokia, Council of Chief State School Officers, Employers for Education Excellence, Facing History and Ourselves, the International Society for Technology in Education, the Jane Goodall Institute, National Academy Foundation, the National Education Foundation, and Phi Beta Kappa International.

Jumpstart’s Read for the Record Campaign

Jumpstart’s Read for the Record Campaign gives young children and adults the chance to come together around the United States – and around the world – to share in the joys of reading. In addition to raising money for Jumpstart, the Read for the Record Campaign gives participants the chance to see for themselves the power of this great nonprofit organization, and puts in participants’ own hands the power to help ensure that early education remains a national priority. Since 2006, Pearson people and businesses have helped Jumpstart raise more than $4 million dollars as a result of this annual campaign – funds that go directly to support Jumpstart’s year-round work in classrooms and communities across the United States.

Family Book Nights

The Pearson Foundation’s Family Book Nights program makes it easy for community-focused venues, including preschools, Head Start programs, libraries, and Early Childhood Education development centers, to introduce the importance of early literacy to parents and families. During each event, young children and their families are invited to create their very own personalized book – one that they can keep, together with copies of bestselling books published by Pearson’s Penguin, Puffin, and Dorling Kindersley imprints, after the celebration concludes.

Response to Need and Crisis around the Globe

Helping Recovery from Natural Disasters

Through the Pearson Foundation, Pearson people and businesses have also supported our global neighbors recovering from disasters in other parts of the world.

In 2008, for example, we raised more than $300,000 to help displaced students and their families following the devastating hurricanes in Myanmar and the earthquakes in Northern China. In Myanmar, these funds were used to provide emergency education relief; and in China – where many students were displaced from their homes – funds were used to provide young people with scholarships to new schools, and new lives, in Beijing. Previously, we set up relief funds in response to the South Asian tsunami, as well as the earthquakes in Pakistan and India.

Support for Our Global Neighbors and Underserved Populations

The Pearson Development Fund

In 2007, the Pearson Foundation established the Pearson Development Fund to lend support to local education efforts in communities around the globe based on recommendations from our own Pearson staffers. Examples of projects funded include a new professional development program for elementary school teachers across southern Africa. Now beginning its third year, the program provides free, local training in early childhood development, literacy, numeracy, and 21st century skills development. We’re also planning our third Citi-FT Financial Literacy Conference, an annual summit developed specifically to ensure equal financial opportunities for everyone across Asia. We’re providing free digital English Language training programs in Uruguay, delivering digital curriculum over mobile phones to students in remote parts of the Philippines and Tanzania, and helping train teachers and develop lending libraries in remote communities in Cambodia and India.

Fostering Education in Africa

The Pearson Foundation has funded the building of many schools and libraries in remote areas of Kenya, Tanzania, and South Africa, and provides continuing support to ensure their success.

International Rescue Committee’s Healing Classrooms Initiative

The Pearson Foundation funds this global program that trains and supports teachers at the front lines in the recovery and support of children during and after armed conflict.

The Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children

The nonprofit Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children receives Pearson Foundation support to produce publications necessary for its exemplary advocacy work: research studies and reports, country case studies, field-friendly tools and training materials, video, and website tools.

The International Organization for Migration in Ghana

The Pearson Foundation hosts digital arts workshops and provides technology and support for the organization’s services for young people who were kidnapped and forced to work in dangerous conditions in Ghana.

The Sara Communication Initiative for Girls in South Africa

The Pearson Foundation provides funding for this community-based program designed specifically to help young girls in African communities who have been subject to rape and humiliation get on with their lives – building self-esteem and learning decision-making skills and personal risk protection that will enable them to stay in school.

Pennies for Peace

Solely from student donations, this nonprofit group has established 100 schools in rural and often volatile areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan. To support Pennies for Peace, the Pearson Foundation, in conjunction with the National Education Association Foundation, announced a new K-12 service-learning toolkit designed to help educators create effective penny-raising campaigns as part of their school curriculum.