Join us on our journey to advance knowledge.
Revealing our shortlist for Word of the Year
Catch up with our announcement of this year’s shortlist, hosted by lexicographer Susie Dent with a panel of OUP experts.
Community Voices
Our community spans the world, and each person brings something new and unique to the conversation.
Your Oxford Story: Casper Grathwohl
“What I love about Word of the Year is that it’s an opportunity to step back and think about how we’re changing. Our lexicographers are able to analyze real language and how we’re using it to expose insights into who we are and how we’re evolving as a people, as a society, and a culture.”
Charity Partnerships
Discover more about our charitable partners, and how we’re moving knowledge and learning forward together.
Raise a Reader
Through our Raise a Reader campaign, we visited ten locations across England with lower levels of literacy, providing parents with advice and free resources to support children in reading for pleasure.
We also collaborated with the National Literacy Trust and joined the Primary School Library Alliance as a flagship partner, enabling schools in disadvantaged areas of Oxfordshire to set up their own reading spaces. Colleagues volunteered with tasks such as tidying, stocking shelves, stamping books, and decorating the newly purposed libraries.
Book Aid International
Last year, we donated almost 185,000 books to Book Aid International, supporting them to send more than 1.1 million books to over 180 partners in 26 countries across the world. These donations provided educational and enrichment opportunities to readers in thousands of schools, libraries, universities, refugee camps, prisons, and hospitals.
Book Aid International shares the power of books and helps create a more equal world where everyone has access to books that will enrich and improve their lives.
Türkiye-Syria Earthquake Appeal
We donated 21,000 print and digital materials to schools we work with in parts of southern Türkiye that were affected by the earthquakes of February 2023.
We also donated to the Disasters Emergency Committee’s (DEC). DEC funds have helped to provide emergency cash transfers, shelter, medical treatment, hot food, clean water and hygiene provisions to hundreds of thousands of people in the affected areas across Turkey and Syria.
Warriors of Hope South Africa
We donated dictionaries to Warriors of Hope South Africa (WOHSA) as part of their education programmes for children and adults from disadvantaged areas.
WOHSA is committed to serving underprivileged communities in the Western Cape, and seeks to spread hope, show care, enable steadfastness, courage, and resilience in facing difficult situations with dignity.
SOLA
We provided 1,000 books to The School of Leadership, Afghanistan (SOLA) to help build a library for its temporary campus in Rwanda.
SOLA is an Afghan-led boarding school for Afghan girls with a mission to build a generation of women with leadership skills. SOLA evacuated Kabul upon the Taliban’s return in 2021, resuming operations in Rwanda where they draw Afghan girls from around the world, providing a rigorous education—promoting critical thinking, a sense of purpose, and a place where Afghan girls can grow to become compassionate, curious, confident women.
Thaki
We continue to support Thaki. In 2022, 22,000 children through Thaki accessed OUP content to learn English. Thaki’s circular economy model takes donated and used computer hardware and edtech software, and delivers these vital learning tools to schools that cater to refugee and vulnerable children in the Middle East.
Thaki, pronounced “the key” which means “smart” in Arabic is a women-led NGO registered in the Netherlands and Lebanon, working to secure brighter futures by providing refugee children access to computers with built-in digital educational resources.
BETTER
In Australia, we provided educational material to BETTER, which has given over 610 students the ability to complete senior school. BETTER has already had success at their first school which is now ranked fourth in the country’s National Exams.
BETTER has more than 650 students educated at their first school and more than 45 volunteers in Australia. Their aim is to provide children in East Timor with better prospects through education. Their second and first progressively developed K-12 school will be built in the community of Same (Sah-may).
ARCh
Colleagues from OUP through Assisted Reading for Children (ARCh), spent time with children in schools across Oxfordshire to improve their reading skills. As a result, schools report dramatic improvements in reading ability and interest, comprehension, self-esteem, communication skills, and general attitude to school and learning.
ARCh helps pupils in Oxfordshire who struggle with their reading. They send trained volunteers into primary schools with the goal of inspiring in the children a love of reading.