Written by Adarna House Staff
This piece is part of a series of short essays commemorating Adarna House's 45th Anniversary. This third article reflects on how partnerships—with brands and institutions—have helped Adarna House fulfill its mission of serving Filipino children through education, storytelling, and community-building.
Over 45 years of existence, Adarna House’s mission has remained the same. The wording has adjusted from decade to decade, but our priority is unchanged: to provide Filipino children with high-quality, entertaining, and educational products.
We have been blessed to find other brands who have shared that same goal. Looking back, some of our biggest wins have been because of these collaborations.
Read-To-Learn
One such partnership that stood the test of time has been our participation in Ronald McDonald House Charities’ (RMHC) Read-To-Learn program. Formerly called “Bright Minds Read," this childhood literacy program was established as a joint project between DepEd and RMHC in 2002, with Adarna House to supply reading materials and supplementary workshops for teachers.
The pilot test was conducted with over 4000 first graders from 14 public schools in Metro Manila, where teacher facilitators taught reading through focused group storytelling sessions. In fact, it was these sessions that birthed Adarna House’ iconic “big books” with pages and fonts large enough for children to be able to see from the back of a classroom.
The program was an immediate success and deemed effective. Nonreaders at the first grade level decreased from 40% to 4% in just one year, and so the program continues to this day as “Read To Learn (RTL)”.
Nowadays, training sessions for teachers under RTL are conducted by Adarna House across the country, arming hundreds of public school teachers every year with the ability to teach reading skills to kids. Teachers are trained to use the Marungko approach (a system of teaching phonics for learning reading in Filipino) and given Read To Learn kits which contain 36 Adarna House books for beginner readers and other materials for using these books in class.
“It gets really hard sometimes. I remember when I first took on the project in 2019, the first RTL workshop I organized was in Tacloban, Leyte, right after the earthquakes that year. We weren’t even sure if the workshop would continue, or if the teachers had the headspace for it,”
said Tricia de Leon, Business Development Officer at Adarna House.
“But the turnout was still more than 400 teachers or over 90% of our expected attendees, and the teachers loved the workshop. In fact, in every RTL we’ve done, the teachers are always very thankful still for the training and the materials. You can see that they care so much about getting their students the resources they need.”
In 2013 and up to the present, the program also transitioned from serving monograde schools to multigrade schools. This meant focusing efforts on schools in far-flung provinces where children of different grade levels are taught simultaneously in the same classroom.
“Multigrade schools are a real challenge to serve because often these are schools you can’t get to just by car or truck. We have had to haul bags of books and teaching materials through rivers and mountains,”
Ms. Marie Angeles, Executive Director at RMHC, told Adarna House staff.
“But you see what a big difference Read-To-Learn makes and it’s always worth it.”
Ms. Angeles also mentioned the importance of continuing this shared advocacy with Adarna House.
“At RMHC, our mission is to serve families and children most especially. Education is also very close to my heart–I will ensure that education is always a core tenet of all our programs, alongside health and support for families.”
The Raya School
Another brand that shares our mission is one very close to Adarna House– one might even say familial. The Raya School is a progressive school for kids from preschool age to senior high school age, and it was founded by Ani Rosa Almario, PhD, daughter of Adarna House’s own founder, Virgilio Almario.
“Bright Minds Read, when it was just beginning, always made me wonder how much more we can innovate educational materials for children, just like how we pioneered big books in the classroom in the Philippines. I was closely involved in the program as well so at the time I was thinking in terms of books and other similar products,”
Said Ani.
“It turns out that the seed that was germinating in my imagination was not a book but a school.”
The Raya School was founded in 2005 with two main principles. First, that it should be a truly progressive school, open to any and all nontraditional methodologies so long as they are in service to the child’s development. Second, that the school should have a deep love of the country as its foundation— a principle that must be shared by students, teachers, and even parents. These two are foremost among the school’s eight thrusts: sense of country, discovery-based, play-oriented, a four-pronged approach to reading, meaning-centered, child-centered, culturally-appropriate and developmentally-appropriate.
“In fact, we interview all the parents that want to enroll in Raya,”
Ani said.
“We want Raya to be a good fit for them as well. We don’t have an honor system, or grades, or some of the other things you expect from a traditional school. On top of that, we want the parents of our students to also care about what we care about: love of country. Natuwa naman ako that there are so many Filipino parents who do share that thought and want their children to not just be educated but to have a strong sense of being Filipino and pride in who they are.”
The Raya School’s history is also intertwined with Adarna House’s. The Raya School’s teachers are frequent consultants on Adarna House’s books for children to ensure science-backed, accurate, and updated methodologies for creating educational content. Many of Adarna House’s smaller initiatives through the years have been in partnership with the Raya School, from product research to workshops to outreach and more.
“When it comes to providing resources and avenues for children to learn better, there’s really so many ways to help,”
said Ani.
“Books are just one way. School and education was another way that we found. There are more and we will keep entering those avenues because our mission is always bigger than our product line.”
Four Decades of Putting Children First
In the Philippines, book publishing is not a big industry, all things considered. The children’s book publishing industry is already the biggest part of it, and that’s mainly because of the need for reading materials in schools. Picture books, textbooks, flash cards and more—there are few big companies that operate in this space.
But as mentioned by Ani, Adarna House’s mission has always superseded its business model. Adarna House was created to service the needs of Filipino children, and it can do so with books but it can also work with other brands to do more.
Aside from Read To Learn and a long-standing relationship with The Raya School, Adarna House has also partnered with other schools, TV networks, NGOs, commercial brands, and more throughout four-and-a-half decades. One might remember an Adarna House-based storytelling series on DZMM’s Todo-Todo, Walang Preno called the Teaching, Learning, Caring (TLC) project. Or Lingap Bulilit on Wheels, our teacher training and library project with Miriam College. Kuwentong Adarna on the Knowledge Channel. Storytelling events for children with various LGUs across Metro Manila.
What ties all of these initiatives and brands together is our shared purpose. We think that our current version of our company mission describes it best:
Lumikha ng makabuluhan at kawili-wiling karanasan para sa mambabasang Filipino.
The mission continues.
The story of Adarna House continues in upcoming essays. Like and follow us on Facebook and Instagram to catch the next release.