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Worldwide community support
Alongside our flagship community programmes in the US, we are committed to supporting community issues across all our key regions:
UK
- Last year, the FT donated advertising worth £530,000 to support a variety of charities and causes. The FT's UK edition has been donating advertising space to the UK's largest homeless charity, Crisis, for the past ten years. In 2005, the Crisis Christmas Challenge, which encourages corporates to donate their Christmas card budget to the charity, raised more than £785,000 - the most raised in its ten year history.
- The Financial Times operates an employee reading and mentoring scheme in London, in conjunction with Community Service Volunteers. Employees either act as a mentor to the children or help develop their reading skills at one of five schools local to the FT's head office in London. The scheme is growing, with more employees involved each year.
Asia
- Throughout 2005, Pearson helped Book Aid to distribute books and education materials to the 52 community libraries in Sri Lanka that were damaged or destroyed as a result of the tsunami in December 2004. Pearson donated 15,000 Longman, Ladybird, Puffin and DK books to help restock the libraries. We also made a local purchase grant to enable Sri Lanka's National Library Service and Documentation Board to buy locally produced titles written in Sinhala and Tamil.
- Pearson launched an appeal fund to support relief efforts in Pakistan, following the earthquake in November 2005. The fund, which raised over £130,000, will go towards educational and relief projects in the affected areas.
- The FT continues to develop its popular financial journalism training programme in China, which now includes Beijing University and Fudan University. The masterclass programme invites applications from experienced Chinese business journalists, who want to learn more about financial and economic reporting, feature writing, international trade and journalist ethics. The programme reflects the FT's belief that high-quality, independent news, comment and analysis is essential to the continued expansion of China's economy.
- For 2006, the Financial Times has committed to support Room to Read, a school construction programme in Laos, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Vietnam. Money raised by the FT and their donations has meant that 24 villages in Laos and Vietnam will have new schools, 31 villages across Asia will have bi-lingual reading rooms and 16,000 children in poverty stricken rural villages will have access to new educational facilities.
Australia
- Our publishing businesses in Australia have adopted The Smith Family Learning for Life Program, which provides financial assistance towards the educational needs of disadvantaged children. Over £10,500 was raised by employee activities and company donations in 2005.
South Africa
- Pearson continues its support for disadvantaged students at Cape Town University (UCT), by sponsoring annual bursaries for undergraduates in business courses, and the Chair of Economics Journalism at Rhodes University.
- We raised money for the Orlando Children's Home in Soweto. Pearson and Penguin donated more than £6,700 to the orphanage, which gives children, from abandoned babies to teenagers, the best chance to develop and make a difference in the world.
For further information about how each of our businesses supports their communities, please contact us.
