We're committed to creating equity in our communities.
Our employees volunteer their time and skills, and Audible leverages its resources and listening library, to advance student achievement, talent development and economic empowerment. Through these global efforts, we meet local needs and step up to respond in moments of crisis.
10,000+ students have received free access to Audible’s library and participated in our global workshops, events and educational initiatives.
Audible Stories has help tens of millions of listeners and students in 180+ countries and territories throughout the pandemic.
More than 1,000 Audible employees participate in a wide range of community service programs around the globe each year.
When the pandemic hit and schools closed, we moved quickly to bring stories to families around the world. Launched in 10 days, Audible Stories gave anyone, in any country, free and unlimited streaming access to hundreds of family-friendly titles in nine languages. From April 2020 to June 2021, Audible Stories offered a wide range of perspectives and content by and for underrepresented groups.
We also moved swiftly to respond to local needs. With 1 million Peruvian students relying on the radio to learn, we enabled 33 Spanish-language titles to air on Peru Public Radio. And as the Covid-19 crisis deepened in India, we added locally relevant content, including Hindi-language titles, in addition to donating oxygen concentrators.
Providing free, educational content and resources to students of all ages is one way we engage our communities around the world. For developing readers, listening increases vocabulary, improves enjoyment of literature, and builds stronger foundational skills for speaking and writing.
We support local schools, listening clubs and community organizations through in-kind donations of tablets, headphones and free access to our catalog and specific titles. Our employees have also volunteered to moderate book club discussions and read with students to boost reading comprehension. Initiatives have included Audible’s Project Listen Up with Newark public high schools (and a school-wide listen of Trevor Noah’s Born a Crime), listening clubs like the Mayor’s Book Club and People’s Prep Charter School in Newark and the Black History Listening Club and OKHA in the UK, in-kind donations to schools in Italy, Berlin and the UK, and the Associazione Italiana Dislessia in Italy.
This documentary, produced by Loop Lab students with guidance from our engineers in Cambridge, made the 24th Annual DIYDS Film Festival.
We’re passionate about fostering the next generation of talent in the audio entertainment industry, from acting and writing to sound engineering and production, and strive to provide opportunities for underrepresented youth in our communities.
From offering internships to high school and college students, to working with community organizations to expand knowledge through job skills training and mentoring programs, to hosting students in our studios and collaborating with arts organizations to ensure young actors and writers have access to training, we elevate the voices of future professionals.
This includes training students in Cambridge, MA, on audio engineering for video production with The Loop Lab; working with the Story Factory in Australia on creative writing and audio recording workshops for middle school students; supporting acting and literary programs in the UK like The National Theatre’s New Views playwriting program for 14- to 19-year-olds and providing three-year scholarships for LAMDA acting students; and training our Newark high school interns on podcast production.
Beyond promoting literacy, inspiring and supporting upcoming storytellers, and teaching people how to perform and record audio productions, these efforts helps to foster economic growth for our communities.
One of the most meaningful ways we engage with our communities is through career development and business mentorship. From mock interviews and resume reviews to classes and workshops that teach coding and technical skills, we provide training and mentoring to help our neighbors expand their professional skills and succeed as entrepreneurs.
In Newark, Audible employees work with small businesses, like Newark Venture Partners startups and Newark Working Kitchens restaurants, lending their experience and skills to hone strategic plans, marketing and communications, technical infrastructure and more. We also collaborate with organizations like Makerhoods, which supports microentrepreneurs with limited resources, to provide workshops on topics like goal-setting.
Engineers in our Cambridge, MA, office, focus on how our employees’ technical skills can have the greatest impact. Cambridge employees have volunteered at local schools to mentor students with interest in STEM and to provide workshops, such as hands-on Alexa skill coding. They also work with the Resilient Coders program that aims to equip young adults in underserved communities with the skills needed to become developers. Together, they’ve launched a pilot program that has select coding boot camp graduates join Audible Cambridge tech teams for a one-year apprenticeship with the goal of conversion to a full-time software development engineer.
These efforts help diversify the tech talent pipeline and give our employees the chance to grow their own skills while helping our communities.
The success of our programs relies on our employees’ passion and diverse skills, whether they’re engaging students in literacy and STEM activities, beautifying and improving learning environments, or conducting workshops for students of all ages. We continued many of these initiatives virtually during the pandemic, enabling teams to come together and serve the community side by side.
We also donate clothing and props used in marketing campaigns, put together book bags of essentials, and redistribute office supplies to local students and community organizations. And we respond to the needs of our communities in moments of crisis, including natural disasters like hurricanes in the Caribbean and the US and wildfires in the US and Australia.
Volunteer Lawyers for Justice awarded Audible’s legal team with its Community Vision Award for the team’s work providing pro bono legal services to the Newark community.
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