Employee Volunteering

Each year, we undertake a range of charitable activities and donations in support of our mission. As well as providing funding to charity partners with whom we have ongoing relationships, we also support educational initiatives by donating resources and our employees’ time. All OUP employees have two days’ volunteering leave each year (three in the US) which they can dedicate to supporting organizations that align to our mission.

Charities who we volunteer with include:

• African Hospital Libraries
• ARCh Oxfordshire
• Book Aid International
• Capacis Foundation
• Chudar Foundation
• Children Heard and Seen
• Crisis
• FELLOW
• Orwell Youth Prize
• Picker Pals
• Solar Aid
• Read and Feed
• Operation Backpack

Employee volunteering highlights

Below are highlights from some of our recent employee volunteering activities around the world:

India
For International Day for Charity and Teachers’ Day, colleagues in India became teachers for a day at schools run by our partner charities, as well as helped to organize training sessions for 180 teachers.

UK
At their annual team summit, our Global Ethics and Compliance gave time to build bikes to donate, along with dictionaries and thesauruses, to Oxford-based charity Children Heard and Seen, which supports children whose parents are in prison. In addition, many OUP staff volunteered time to read submissions to the Orwell Youth Prize—a political writing initiative which aims to encourage young people to debate the society they are a part of and the society we should be striving for.

United States
Each year, employees at the OUP New York office volunteer for Operation Backpack—an initiative run by Volunteers of America, which aims to ensure children in the city’s homeless and domestic violence shelters receive a high-quality backpack filled with educational supplies by the beginning of the new school year. This year, as in person volunteering was not possible, they raised funds for the cause instead.

Pakistan
In Pakistan, we ran a session on the art of bookmaking for Deaf Reach, a school in Karachi for children with hearing and speech disabilities. After explaining the bookmaking process, the students worked in groups to produce books on a subject of their choice.

Hong Kong
Employees in Hong Kong volunteered with Oxford Kitchen, where 20 of our people acted as chefs, preparing and serving meals for more than 40 elderly individuals at a community centre ahead of Chinese Lunar New Year.

Spain
While Spain was in lockdown, OUP España organized a series of online training sessions with the students of Capacis Foundation—an NGO which helps young people with intellectual disabilities between the ages of 18 and 30 get job and build their own future.