Supporting the literacy of young people in the UK strengthens the long term interests of our business; we are committed to helping young people reach their full potential.
Working with the National Literacy Trust
Royal Mail is committed to helping raise literacy levels in the UK. As such, Royal Mail is a supporter of World Book Day and the National Literacy Trust’s ‘Vision for Literacy’ Business Pledge. The pledge calls on UK businesses to join the national literacy campaign to help close the nation’s literacy gap and boost social mobility. To raise awareness of our support internally, in 2022, we selected the National Literacy Trust as the beneficiary for this year’s Graduate Challenge. From February to April, our graduates across all business areas in Royal Mail were tasked with creating an awareness campaign for the charity and raising £300 per person. Funds raised will be used to provide books for children across the UK.
Our future as a business, just like that of every other business in the UK, depends on having well-educated and enterprising young people to recruit. These leaders of tomorrow bring with them fresh ideas and inspiration. Royal Mail has a particular interest in literacy levels among young people, encouraging confidence in reading, writing and creativity. For over 50 years we have been providing a free postal service for children to write a letter to Father Christmas through our ‘Letters to Santa’ campaign.
Our education resources
Our classroom resources developed with the Postal Museum can be found here.
Lenny the Letter and Penny the Parcel
This year we started work on the reinvention of one of Royal Mail’s most iconic characters; Lenny the Letter. Lenny has been telling the story of Royal Mail to school children for over 15 years. We have reimagined Lenny and introduced a friend, Penny the Parcel.
The journey of a letter and parcel will now be told through a new short animation that can be shown in schools alongside a suite of resources designed to enhance literacy skills. As part of the rebrand we involved our people in the reinvention process, from voicing the characters to bringing Lenny and Penny to life on school visits via interactive resources.
The animation below is available to download here and an activity pack to support the animation can be downloaded here (pdf, 2.28 MB).
In the meantime, if you are planning a school visit please get in touch with us at community@royalmail.com where we can support you with some best practice guidance for your visit. Please see the 'Special leave' policy for guidance on taking leave.