The Sustainable Story Award celebrates authors across fiction, non-fiction, and children’s literature who engage with urgent environmental and social themes. By empowering authors who bring these critical topics to life, we aim to inspire change, spark dialogue, and make sustainability a central focus in contemporary literature. A total award fund of £25,000 (US$33,170) is expected to supply £15,000 for the winner of the award and £5,000 for each of two runners-up.
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The new program has three parts. The first will be a carbon footprint calendar to be created in the form of a digital platform, allowing publishers to measure the carbon emissions of each work published. A life-cycle analysis is next, monitoring “the individual trajectory of two printed works and their digital environment, in an attempt to support decision-making and modes by which environmental performance can be improved. Finally training will be the third and final element.
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Voluntary 5k for employee participation, to respond to book bans and benefiting the Freedom To Read Foundation, a nonprofit legal and educational organization devised to protect and defend the First Amendment to the US Constitution and to support the rights of both libraries and citizens to access information. Within 12 hours of registration opening Monday (March 24, 2025), Penguin Random House and Sourcebooks employees had raised more than $10,000 for the Freedom To Read Foundation.
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The European Digital Reading Lab (EDRLab) joined the UN SDGs Publishers Compact, focusing on creating an inclusive, equitable, and sustainable digital publishing ecosystem. Our commitment involves advocating for open standards and developing accessible digital content to enhance educational materials’ distribution and accessibility. We are dedicated to developing cutting-edge technologies and promoting interoperability to address industry challenges and enhance user experience. Our efforts also
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Women experience unique health issues such as pregnancy, childbirth, and menopause, which are understudied due to historical bias. From the prenatal period through childhood, the intestinal microbiota sees major compositional changes, and many diseases have been linked to dysbiosis. IAI invites manuscripts on the vaginal microbiome, pathogen-host interaction in the female reproductive tract, or the infant microbiome for its Women’s Health and the Development of Microbiota in Childhood series.
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This online platform for educators offers discussion points for Günışığı Kitaplığı books and creative reading practices that can be easily implemented even with limited resources in disadvantaged regions. For each grade, relevant book files can be accessed by searching according to themes or activity types (drama, writing, trip, game, etc.). The discussion points and reading practices suggested in the book files equip educators with tools that enrich the learning environment in their classrooms.
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After the major earthquakes that took place in the Southeastern Region of Turkey on February 6, 2023, Günışığı Kitaplığı took immediate action to support children and young survivors in the region. In addition to making financial donations, Günışığı Kitaplığı, donated 50,000 books to be distributed in collaboration with major NGO’s and public authorities to the students who try continuing their education in containers and/or tent cities in the region.
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Organised by Günışığı Kitaplığı annualy since 2011 this competition is open to middle school students from all over Turkey. Every year a different theme is selected for the stories to be written, some of which are SDG related such as “Love of Nature”. Award winning and short listed stories are compiled as a book and distributed to all schools and libraries free of charge. Encouraging children to express themselves in writing, this competition develops their written communication skills.
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Seminars prepared and given by Mine Soysal, founding manager of Günışığı Kitaplığı, and the author of Eyvah Kitap! (Oh No Books!), a long-best seller which has reached hundreds of thousands of readers of all ages. The content can be customized according to target audience being mainly educators and/or parents. Besides theoretical background, seminar covers case discussions on interesting topics with the purpose of giving insight to adults for understanding the needs of child readers.
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UQP actively acquires and publishes titles that explore current social and environmental issues to help educate readers and spark important conversations, including Royce Kurmelovs’s SLICK, which provides an on-the-ground examination of how the fossil fuel industry captured Australia, and outlines what’s at stake for the survival of the planet, and King and Sparrow’s OUT OF THE BOX, which brings together expert advice, interviews and up-to-date resources to help ND children thrive.
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In 2020, UQP launched its own sustainability team to develop sustainable business practices from an environmental and social perspective.
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UQP made operational changes to reduce and offset its 2023 emissions and become Australia’s first ‘climate positive’ publisher. With independent verification under Climate Active standards, we measured and reduced our direct emissions and purchased more than the required offsets to be carbon positive. The 2023 offsetting schemes UQP used are accredited under the Gold Standard Schemes and Verra Schemes and are all linked to UN SDGs.
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KEÇİ is a digital platform prepared by Günışığı Kitaplığı, covering the contents of all the annual publishing conferences and teacher seminars which are being organized on a regular basis since 2010, with the purpose of making this valuable content available for open access in the form of a written digital archive. A wide variety of SDG related topics presented in annual seminars and conferences are also available on this platform.
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Günışığı Kitaplığı provides content and organizational support to seminars targeting the professional development of public librarians. These seminars aim to update the knowledge of public librarians on turning libraries into an attractive third place for users. Being one of the best examples of public, private sector, academia and NGO cooperation since 2010, other stakeholders of this project are Hacettepe University, Goethe Institute, Turkish Librarians Association and municipal corporations.
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The sectoral conference, organized by Günışığı Kitaplığı as a social responsibility project since 2011 is supported also by the Turkish Publishers Association. Bringing together all the stakeholders of the publishing industry with new agendas every year, this conference plays an important role in the development of our publishing sector to international standards. The program of the 2022 conference was designed to focus on “Climate Crisis and Publishing Sector” and supported by UNDP Türkiye as well.
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Being the first publishing house in Turkey signing the SDG Pusblishers Compact, Günışığı Kitaplığı has committed to adding new books to its catalogue that will increase knowledge and glorify hope in the fight against the climate crisis. With our expertise in the field of Children’s and YA Literature Books, we aim at drawing the attention of children and young adults to these issues through quality fiction books centered around various themes such as environment, climate change, and migration.
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Annual, free of charge, teacher training seminars organised by Günışığı Kitaplığı since 2010 hosted authors, academicians and experts from related fields as speakers. Discussing the use of literature books in classrooms through “creative reading practices”, every year four such practices are also being presented by teachers. A climate action related topic is also included in each seminar program to furnish the educators with necessary and correct discussion tools with their students.
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UQP is committed to responsible waste management. At our head office, we collect multiple waste streams to be recycled including soft plastics, e-waste, fluorescent tubes, coffee pods and organics. Via UQ’s internal recycling program, UQP’s soft plastics are downcycled into products like decking, wheelie bins, park benches, shipping pallets, bottles and even playgrounds.
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