The Storytelling Project

The Storytelling Project (TSP) is a nonprofit that aims to foster a love of reading through storytelling to cultivate imagination, inspiration, and hope in Filipino families. To achieve this, TSP conducts fun storytelling sessions with underserved Filipino children in rural communities to build confidence in their reading skills and help them enjoy the activity. Since our inception in 2012, TSP has collaborated with at least seven communities to develop a culture of reading through our three core projects:

1. Project Imagine: We build kids’ imaginations through regular storytelling sessions and empower the community through trainings and seminars.

2. Project Create: We create avenues for kids to explore their newfound love for reading by building libraries and reading nooks.

3. Project Share: We share our knowledge and experiences with partner communities through the creation of a book club and the training of mentors.

This is all done with the help of our volunteers, who all exemplify TSP’s core values, including happy learning, love, service, inclusivity, and perseverance. Through TSP’s initiatives, we envision that together, we can nurture a nation of lifelong learners, one story at a time.

Daniel is TSP's Executive Director. He supervises the overall operation of the organization, from the implementation of programs to volunteer management and administrative needs of the organization such as finance and marketing. He also serves as the main volunteer lead and stays with the community for the entire duration of the 3-week program. On one hand, the current thrust for this year is to develop more community leaders so that Daniel does not have to be always the main volunteer lead especially amid the plans to expand to more communities. With consultation from the organization's advisory board and the programs team, he also leads program development. He also builds and maintain relationship with partners and funders.

Daniel is supported by a core team who leads specific committees. The core team meets at least once a month to discuss organizational needs and projects. 

TSP is a volunteer-run organization with a core team of volunteers who dedicate at least one day each week to furthering TSP’s mission and vision. Despite having no full-time paid staff, TSP was able to run its three-week program in three communities during the second semester of 2023, reaching more than 170 kids. We have also conducted special storytelling sessions in at least 10 more schools, reaching more than 500 kids.

Daniel, TSP’s executive director, spends an average of at least 8 hours during the weekdays attending to TSP matters and at least four hours during the weekends. Aside from being TSP’s Executive Director, Daniel is also a part-time instructor in the Mathematics Department of Ateneo de Manila University, one of the top universities in the Philippines. He has strong quantitative skills and a research background. He also serves part-time as a project manager at WeSolve Foundation, a youth-powered coalition incubator and collaboration accelerator for systems change in the Philippines. Hence, he also has some background in development work and scaling solutions, but can still benefit from the expertise of LEAP fellows. 

He is supported by a team of passionate core team volunteers. The core team is made up of young professionals from various backgrounds, but they all share a love of reading as well as technical skills such as project management, writing, and public relations that helps the organization grow.

TSP also benefits from the guidance and experience of its founder, Rey Bufi, who has more than a decade of experience in community work and reading advocacy.

In terms of priorities of the organization, it is also our thrust within the next few years to develop our monitoring and evaluation and strengthen our program. Thus, we will prioritize the engagement with LEAP to help us with this priority area.

TSP conducts fun storytelling sessions for Filipino children to build confidence in their reading skills and help them enjoy reading.

According to a 2021 World Bank report, 9 out of 10 Filipino kids aged 10 and below are unable to read and understand simple text. Inability to read and comprehend also restrains learners to learn the higher-order competencies and subject areas. For instance, it will be more difficult for them to understand math and science problems. With roughly 27 million students in the Philippines deprived of in-person schooling at the height of the pandemic and less than 30% of the student population having internet access, the learning gap has grown exponentially. As the majority of schools in the Philippines have reopened, we are now faced with the challenge of ensuring the effectiveness of hybrid learning by engaging and supporting parents, teachers, and community members as partners in the teaching process.

TSP believes there are three major factors that can hinder children from being able to read⁠—low interest in the activity, low confidence in their ability and a context that does not provide care and support. Thus, TSP strives to set a warm and fun environment where kids from Grades 1 to 3 (6-9 years old) will see reading as an interesting and valuable activity.

Furthermore, the Basic Education Report 2023 delivered by the Philippines' education secretary has shed more light on the context of Filipino learners today, noting that some suffer from psychological fatigue, emotional abuse, and exhaustion. For instance, during online learning, our volunteer teacher have shared that she heard a parent being to angry with her kid for not being able to get the lesson right a way. This troubling new information highlights the need for the learning process to consider both the mental and emotional state and preparedness of learners. This calls for reimagining the traditional approach to their education.

Our proposed solution: happy learning through storytelling.

The four-pronged approach to reading instruction, first developed by Professor Manhit of the University of the Philippines, indicates that the first step to teaching reading is developing a genuine love for the activity. As such, in TSP, we use the magic of telling stories to help children nurture an attitude of enjoyment for reading. We don’t focus on technical aspects such as decoding or language comprehension. Rather, we direct our efforts to ensuring that Filipino learners are able to establish an interest in reading.

As the flagship initiative of TSP, Project Imagine fosters children's love for reading and develops their creativity by providing Hiraya kits (or storybook kits) and conducting regular storytelling sessions.

Hiraya kits (derived from the Filipino translation of imagination) contain storybooks, activity booklets, writing and art materials, and toys/gift items that enable the kids to apply and appreciate the storybook better. Each child receives storybooks as a means to spark an interest in reading and start a reading habit. TSP recognizes the importance of connecting with learners’ context, which is why all of the stories we use are written by Filipino authors and revolve around the themes of the self, family, and community.

TSP also incorporates games and other recreational activities to help children create a positive attitude toward reading. For instance, our sessions would include the "Araw sa Palengke" activity, wherein we set up a mini store and kids are given play money to buy goods within a given budget.

Moreover, TSP aims to involve and empower the children's community to support the program's implementation by having orientation meetings and workshops for their teachers and parents. Older students are even encouraged to act as mentors or "little helpers," who can also be storytellers or even story writers.

Through Project Imagine, TSP aims to help kids overcome their fears and poor perceptions of themselves. We curate stories that are relevant for their context and deliver messages of hope and inspiration. For instance, the story of “Ching na Takot sa Dilim” shows how the main character overcomes her fear of darkness. In our work for the past ten years, we have seen shifts in the reading attitudes and confidence of children. Data from TSP’s reading survey and focus group discussions showed us that our reading program has helped young people discover themselves in a way that enables them to develop their skills in other aspects, such as educational proficiency. Project Imagine also promotes a conducive learning environment that enables children to develop meaningful relationships with teachers and students, which contribute to greater social, emotional, and educational outcomes. By cultivating the imagination and creativity of Filipino children, TSP sets them off on a life-changing path of personal learning and growth

TSP’s impact on its beneficiaries have been established via the following research/methodologies:

1. Our usual approach to gathering information about our impact is through a focused group discussion with guardians after the program. 

2. A previous core team member who took his master's at the University of the Philippines, Los Banos (UPLB) studied our 21-day program. He used a 5-point pictorial research questionnaire designed to measure reading attitude and confidence in reading, conducted through one-on-one pretest and posttest interviews. He conducted the test for an intervention group and a control group. Meanwhile, the students‘ individual library cards were used to collect data on their reading behavior. Following this study, we recently tried to conduct a shorter version of the 5-point questionnaire, but within the intervention group only.

3. Another pair of researchers from UPLB studied the program by conducting focus group discussions with parents and individual interviews with the participating children before and after the month-long program.

1. During our focused group discussions, parents and teachers would often share that their kids have shown more interest in reading and learning after the program. For instance, in our recent community, a parent shared that her kid used to be playing most of the time at the beach; however, after the program, she now sees her son more at home reading books and drawing. Parents have also shared that children exemplify good values. For instance, parents shared that their kids learned more to share because of the stories “Hating-Kapatid” (Sharing Between Siblings) and “Araw sa Palangke” (A Day in the Market). Another parent shared that her kid pointed out that he will not be shy anymore and will have courage like Onyok from Mahiyaing Manok. The sessions also motivated kids to share stories with their families, or the kids asked their parents to read stories to them, which suggests that some bonds within TSP families were also strengthened.

2. “Data gathered from the survey questionnaire showed that there was a significant difference in the reading attitude and confidence in reading between the intervention group and the control group after the 21-day storytelling program. In the same manner, data gathered from the students‘ reading behavior profiles revealed that while the intervention program was ongoing, the participating learners of the program consistently visited and borrowed books from the library." (An excerpt from The Impact of a 21-Day Storytelling Program on Selected Grade 2 Students of Pagsawitan Elementary School, by Darrel Marco)

3. "The study revealed that: (1) parents view books, reading, and storytelling either as learning, emotional experience, leisure, or opportunity for life skills and socialization; (2) the majority of the children have positive feelings towards books, reading, and storytelling before and after the program, although they seemed to have a more concrete and profound experience of the reading material and process upon participation in the program; and (3) parents observed changes in attitude and behavior, level of confidence, and sharing of enjoyment in reading after the program." (An excerpt from the Reading Engagement among Selected Filipino Children: Exploring the Perceived Outcomes of a Reading Program in a Public Elementary School in Laguna, Philippines, by Nep Botor et al.)

TSP has been fostering a love of reading through storytelling for more than a decade now. In our 10th year, TSP embarked on a journey to reach more communities amid the disheartening reality that many learners were left behind when schools were closed for more than a year. Our partner communities have shared that many learners did not improve from their pre-pandemic reading levels.

Prior to 2022, we typically focused on one community per year, but last year we attempted to cover three communities, acknowledging the greater need to improve the reading ability of Filipino young learners. There is also a consistent demand from different communities and institutions to partner with TSP for a reading program.

The changing context of our learners and the need to be more strategic with resources pushed the organization to also redesign our program and approaches. Hence, we will need a new set of research or studies evaluating changes in our methods. For instance, from the original 21 sessions, we shortened it to just 8-10 sessions.

Another change we are exploring is deepening the discussion on stories. TSP usually changes the featured stories every session. This year, we will try to conduct a second day for each story where we will have more engagement activities.

As we develop our program, we are also becoming more conscious that our model should not be a one-size-fits-all intervention but should have nuances depending on the background and needs of our learners as well as the capacity of our partners to co-implement the program.

1. Does Project Imagine (or the storytelling program) facilitate faster learning of kids to read or comprehend text?

2. What characteristics, context, or conditions serve as facilitating or hindering factors in the reading ability of learners? 

3. How does learning to read within an urban context differ from learning within a rural context?

In the first four weeks, LEAP fellows will be tasked to provide insights and recommendations on TSP’s evaluation framework, with a focus on improving the system. LEAP fellows will also be asked to support in tweaking certain parts of the storytelling program to be post-assessed on whether they add more value to the overall outcome.

To answer the Research Question 1, TSP seeks to run tests on an intervention group and a control group. In developing the test, TSP will require inputs on the design and methodology from the LEAP fellows to help strengthen our evidence base. TSP’s evidence base currently consists of anecdotes from group discussions. While current evidence suggests that TSP’s program helps increase the interest of kids in reading, there is no hard data that proves it actually translates to better learning abilities or whether TSP kids learned faster to read. 

For Research Question 2, we request fellows’ input on what we can add to our pre-program profiling or processes we can consider during implementation to capture the necessary data to answer the question on facilitating and hindering factors. If granted as a LEAP host, TSP also plans to run the program at two sites simultaneously — one in an urban setting and another in a rural context. We will need guidance from LEAP fellows to determine whether the cycles will be completely the same or if there will be slight differences in implementation. Any tweaks into the program implementation can also help contribute insights on when addressing learning variability becomes helpful or detrimental.

Weeks 5-8 will be allotted for the implementation of the program and data collection. LEAP fellows can also use this time to review previously collected data and information about TSP from other sites that can enrich our research. The final month will be allotted for data processing and analysis.

If the development of the evaluation plan and tools needs more time, we are also open to the idea that the entire 12-week period will be allotted solely to this, and TSP will just implement the tools after the 12-week period.

1. Improvements in TSP’s monitoring and evaluation. We will use the outputs as basis for the monitoring and evaluation of our future communities. One of TSPs core value is happy learning. This does not only apply to the kind of learning we want our partner communities to have, but also it applies to us volunteers of the organization. We continuously seek to grow and improve our operations learning from evidence. 

2. Development of different models of implementation. Acknowledging that each community has its distinct context and needs, the LEAP project sprint outputs will contribute to TSP’s continuous process of improving the program. It will help the organization better nuance the implementation from one community to another.

3. Strengthened internal and external communications and supporting scale. Any findings from the LEAP project or after applying the M&E tools developed from project will be communicated to the following: (a) our volunteers - to help ground their interactions, understand better why we do certain things in the program and know their role in the formation, and (b) potential partners - to help us secure long lasting partnerships and help scale our operations. We will also organize convenings or round table discussion to share results with school reading coordinators, school heads, education policy makers, local practitioners, and other local nonprofit organizations to strengthen their own programs and discuss possible areas of working together to scale impact. This is the expertise of WeSolve Foundation, the other organization where our Team Lead is affiliated with.

1. Improved reading abilities of learners. The insights and recommendations from the LEAP Project Sprint will help TSP improve our methods and approaches especially taking into account the differences in context and learning styles of children. We believe that this can increase the likelihood of better learning outcomes for our kids.

2. More efficient use of resources. The original program of TSP runs for 21-straight days and giving each kid a set of 21 books. Afterwards, we also do follow-up sessions for at least a year. This requires quite a lot of resources both in terms of finances and manpower, thus we are exploring other ways to make it lighter for the organization. The outputs from the LEAP project sprint will inform us how we can be more strategic with our resources. For instance, if the lesser number of sessions we will implement, achieves a similar impact.

3. Increased scale of impact through partnerships and policies. With more efficient use of resources, we can save some to allow the organization to scale and reach more communities. As shared in the previous item, the outputs will also contribute in strengthening our communication materials and advocacy campaigns to rally more support and invite more partners to work with us and reach greater scale. We believe that the outputs can also contribute to education policy making as the project can serve as a blueprint to improve the current reading abilities of Filipino kids. We believe that the project has some innovative approaches that can inform current approaches that inhibit learners’ reading ability as indicated by the various international assessments or studies on Philippine education situation.