The Storytelling Project (TSP) aims to spark hope, inspiration and imagination through storytelling; to make reading an enjoyable experience for children; to start a reading habit; and to instill the love of reading and learning in all our TSP kids. We’ve tirelessly crossed rivers and excitedly conquered mountains to reach remote communities – to bring our own brand of happy learning.
Our 3-Phase Program starts with (Phase1) a month-long community immersion to conduct storytelling sessions for Grades 2-3 students, story writing training for Grades 4-6 students in which selected works would be published, parenting seminars, teachers’ training and volunteers’ training. We want to set out something so essential and yet very basic, that is, to love and be passionate about reading – to establish it a habit. This is because we strongly believe that through reading a child could learn new ideas he could use in school, learn about the world around him and learn about himself. We want children to be enthusiastic about learning, to be constantly hungry for learning new things that would enrich their life through ideas and experiences. We do not teach them how to read but to love reading books instead. We strive to make their experiences in TSP as enjoyable and engaging as we could. We do target some basic topics in school, but for them to learn those are an added bonus. We want the children to feel safe to voice out all their ideas and to make them feel that they all have skills and abilities. We want the children to learn from their failures and to accept defeat. We desire to create critical thinkers who would soon lead us to inventions and innovations, create works of art and literature and fight for the values they strongly believe in. We want to touch their lives and unleash their genius. We aim to help the children create their own books and then publish those books. We want the children to dream of becoming writers, poets, academicians, and scholars. Part of the proceeds from the books will go to the child writers and child illustrators as a college fund. We want our learners to contribute back to their community and continue the TSP legacy. We want a community library (Phase II) to be present in every TSP site. To maximize all book donations, we will help the community create their own programs. We want to influence the community in embracing a culture of reading and writing and to aid in the preservation and cultivation of the Filipino culture. We strongly believe that having a culture of reading could produce Filipinos who are open minded individuals, inventors, innovators and critical thinkers. In the end, we want reading to be ingrained in the culture of all the TSP communities and eventually in the culture of the Filipino people.