Room to Read: Addressing Global Poverty Starts with Educating Girls and Women

From the judges, “This is a great example of a contemporary Workplace Giving campaign engaging a young employee base.”

In seven years of partnership, Atlassian have impacted the lives of over 250,000 children by supporting Room to Read, a global non-profit dedicated to improving literacy and gender equality in education for children in developing countries.

Software company Atlassian have applied their passion, creativity and technical skills to help Room to Read engage a broader philanthropic audience in Workplace Giving. The current partnership model was inspired by a trip taken by Atlassian team members to see Room to Read’s Girls’ Education Program in Cambodia. They spent time in classrooms with the teachers and students and visited the students in their homes, meeting with their families.

At the end of the tour the group designed the Workplace Giving campaign “$1 a Day” where the Atlassian Foundation sponsors one girl for every employee in the global team. Employees are then encouraged to contribute to another girl’s sponsorship with $1 a Day from their own pay.

Atlassian and Room to Read worked together to communicate with staff, developing a program of engagement so that they could follow the impact of their generosity in Cambodia, and the efforts of their colleagues around the world. The program has received great support from Atlassian’s largely millennial workforce with 712 staff signing up in its first year.

The $1 a Day campaign model has been so successful that Room to Read now promotes the approach to all of its global corporate partnership portfolio.

Since its launch more than 7,500 young women have been impacted by Atlassian’s support of the $1 a Day initiative.