As the UK’s leading bookseller and stationer, literacy remains the primary focus of our community programmes. Research findings consistently conclude that children who read for pleasure have better life chances, and promoting the love of reading is therefore the over-arching objective behind our literacy programmes.
Working in partnership with the National Literacy Trust
WH Smith PLC and the WHSmith Group Charitable Trust have been working in partnership with the National Literacy Trust for seven years now on projects to promote reading for pleasure. Last year, we piloted a new three-year project as part of the National Literacy Trust’s Young Readers Programme for Families.
The Young Readers Programme for Families is the National Literacy Trust’s programme to help parents support their children’s literacy skills and discover the enjoyment of reading. The partnership with WHSmith has funded projects in 16 locations during 2010/11, taking place in locations stretching from Edinburgh and Dundee to Exeter and Lambeth.
Each project is made up of five workshops for parents with children who are either in Reception (age 4-5) or in Year 3 (age 7-8). Session topics include how to read with your children, helping your child select books, how to get the most out of library services and how to choose books to buy for the home. At the end of each session, children join their parents so they can build confidence reading together. The final session includes a visit to the local WHSmith store where the Children’s Books Supervisor gives the families a tour around the store and WHSmith vouchers so that the children and parents can choose new books together. The school also receive WHSmith vouchers to buy books for the classroom.
Supporting World Book Day
World Book Day was designated by UNESCO as a worldwide celebration of books and reading, and is marked in over 100 countries around the globe. It is the biggest annual celebration of books and reading in the UK and is sponsored by National Book Tokens, with a group of publishers, booksellers and interested parties all working together to promote the enjoyment of reading. This year, World Book Day in the UK was chaired by WHSmith Books Business Unit Director, Rachel Russell.
We supported the event across our High Street store estate withmany holding World Book Day celebratory events for children from local schools. Events included face painting, treasure hunts, magic shows and story telling by authors including Anthony Horowitz and Jacqueline Wilson. This year, the teams from two of our hospital stores also helped bring World Book Day to those children who were patients at the time, with magic shows and the opportunity for the children to choose their free World Book Day book.
Richard and Judy Children’s Book Club in partnership with Booktrust
Spring 2011 saw the launch of a new initiative focused on children’s reading, the Richard and Judy Children’s Book Club, exclusively with WHSmith. The Children’s Book Club is made up of three categories with six book titles in each; Read Together, Read Yourself and Fluent Reader, and aims to help parents choose great books which children will love. We are working alongside Booktrust, an independent charity which aims to encourage people of all ages and cultures to enjoy books.
The WHSmith Group Charitable Trust
The WHSmith Group Charitable Trust is an independent registered charity [registered charity no. 1013782] that actively supports employees that are involved with charitable organisations in their local community.
The Trust has two principle objectives which focus its activities:
• To support the local communities in which WHSmith staff and customers live and work; and
• To support education and lifelong learning, helping people of any age to achieve their educational potential.
We encourage our employees to be actively involved in their local communities and many of our staff are personally involved in work across their communities. To support and encourage staff involvement, the Trust matches employee fundraising and volunteering, making around 50 grants worth over £29,000 during 2010/11. These employee-nominated charities range from big national campaigns such as Macmillan Cancer Support and the British Heart Foundation to small community based charities including brownie packs and hospital radio services.
The Trust also supports schools, with grants to employees who are on the PTA or Board of Governors, opportunities for employees to nominate a local school for a grant, and a monthly prize draw which any school is eligible to enter. In total, the Trust gave grants worth around £13,000 to support schools during the year.
Schools Giveaway
WHSmith’s 612 High Street stores are at the heart of communities across the UK. Our store teams are keen to play an active part in those communities. One way they can do this is through the WHSmith Schools Giveaway. Now in its second year, the Giveaway is a partnership with the WHSmith Trust whereby High Street stores receive vouchers to give to a local school. This year, over 160 schools received a total of £25,000 in WHSmith vouchers. Schools were delighted to receive the donation, using the vouchers to purchase books for libraries and materials for the new school term. This programme has proven to be hugely successful, engaging our store teams with their local communities and creating even more enthusiasm to support local schools.
Books for Hospitals
WHSmith now has a strong presence in the hospital sector, operating stores in 111 hospitals across the UK. The staff within our hospital stores often become a core part of hospital life and well known to the hospital staff. Many of our store managers provide ad hoc support to the Hospital Trust for example donating penny stock or prizes to hospital fundraising activities, however we were keen to find other ways for WHSmith to support the Hospital Trusts. We discovered that books are often overlooked in hospital budgets, but that books can play an important role in patients’ care, for example as a tool to distract young patients from treatment or to help an older patient to relax.
During the year, we worked in partnership with the WHSmith Trust to make book donations to eleven hospitals. As part of the programme, each hospital receives a donation of over 300 books. The book selection is tailored to the needs of the individual hospital, perhaps for children’s ward or hospital school, or focused on the needs of elderly patients or for book trolleys. We work closely with play coordinators, nurses and other hospital staff to create individual book lists for each hospital.
This year’s book presentations took place in hospitals from Glasgow to Truro, and were led by a number of members of the WHSmith senior management team, including Chairman, Walker Boyd, and WHSmith Travel Chief Operating Officer, Simon Smith.
In the year ahead, we plan to make further book donations to another ten hospitals where WHSmith has stores.