Written by Adarna House Staff
This piece is part of a series of short essays commemorating Adarna House’s 45th anniversary. This article highlights the vital role of the Adarna Group Foundation, Inc. (AGFI), the organization’s corporate social responsibility arm. Through early literacy programs and partnerships with local government units, AGFI helps further Adarna House’s mission to nurture a culture of reading in Filipino homes and communities.
In our first quarter company-wide staff meeting this year, Adarna House president Asa Victoria Montenejo, likened the organization’s various departments to body parts. Marketing, Logistics, Product Development, Business Development, and HR make up the various limbs and senses of Adarna House, allowing it to function.
“As for AGFI,”
Asa added.
“AGFI is Adarna’s heart.”
Established in 2013, the Adarna Group Foundation, Inc. has served as Adarna House’s corporate social responsibility arm for the last decade. The foundation aims to bring early literacy programs and teacher support to LGUs across the country. To date, it has served over a hundred communities. This is hundreds of hours of facilitating seminars for childcare providers, the distribution of tens of thousands of reading materials, and an equivalent number of children affected.
IT TAKES A VILLAGE
AGFI programs are targeted towards children aged 0 to 4 years old—too young to independently read or learn from the majority of Adarna House’s books. Instead, AGFI arms childcare providers such as parents, LGU workers, and other members of the child’s community.
It does this through its flagship program: Step By Step. Step By Step is a ladderized set of programs facilitated for healthcare workers, child development workers, and parents. They teach participants the value of reading as well as arm them with techniques that can be used to establish a culture of reading in the home or in daycares. The program comes with several customizations and specialized workshops for early literacy advocates.
The result is that children are able to grow up in environments where early literacy is fostered, which has effects all throughout their childhood and early schooling.
For example, in Samal, Bataan, AGFI has brought its programs to 23 Child Development Centers (CDCs), alongside supplying the community with now over 10,000 books to date. Early literacy programs are now a part of Samal’s municipal ordinances.
This is the game plan: for AGFI to bring these programs to LGUs and then for these LGUs in turn to institutionalize even just the concept of early literacy as being a vital part of childcare.
Con Estrella, Executive Director of AGFI, says:
“It takes a village to raise a child, but it also takes legislation to form a child-raising village. What we want is to show these LGUs that storytelling and education are vital to child development, and to help them on their way, AGFI will make it easy to adopt these programs.”
SUSTAINABILITY IS KEY
Despite AGFI’s best efforts, however, getting early literacy programs to stick is still an uphill battle. Child development and healthcare workers in LGUs are typically volunteers with limited professional background in education and inconsistent access to skills seminars. They’re in it purely to service their community and take care of the youth.
And as the LGU’s politics change from election to election, a lot of policies and personnel also don’t last more than a term.
Agatha Vargas, Communications Coordinator, recalls one such LGU:
“I always think about the workshop we held in Sipalay, Negros Occidental. Some volunteers, like other CDWs, were not college graduates or education majors, but are driven to help the children in their community. While they recognize that some of them are not familiar with the methodologies for introducing literacy to children, they acknowledge the importance of expanding their capacities to better serve the children. They were so thankful for the workshop.”
Even so, early literacy programs are not often as prioritized as more straightforward welfare programs. Luckily, there are still several LGUs who see the long-term vision in building such an important skill in children as early as three or four years old.
In terms of reach, AGFI has since expanded to all corners of the Philippines from the north all the way to Mindanao. It has run workshops in urban and rural communities. AGFI also works with several partners and funders such as the San Miguel Foundation, the ASKI Foundation, the ICCP Group Foundation, and LBC Foundation which is in its 3rd year of partnership with AGFI.
As Con frequently tells her team, “malayo pa, pero malayo na.”
STORIES FROM THE FIELD
The AGFI team is small, considering the scale of their impact across hundreds of barangays. Con leads two others who each see their work with AGFI also as personal advocacies.
Agatha, the newest member of the team, is thankful to be part of the team:
“AGFI is my first job after graduating from college last year. I don’t think it’s an easy first job—the work is events and fieldwork and there are always unexpected challenges. But I feel incredibly lucky to work somewhere that is doing something so important.”
Milli Cabildo, Program Coordinator, takes to heart the reaction of parents to the Step By Step and Eager Reader programs:
“When I talk to the parents, they say that their kids start to love reading as soon as they introduce it to their households. Through using Adarna House books at home, and using the training from AGFI’s workshops, parents are always so proud to make storytime a regular part of their home life. For the kids, it’s a type of bonding time that’s so much better than screen time. My favorite part of any excursion we do is hearing this sort of thing from the parents.”
As for Con, seeing the mission spread keeps her going:
“Every time we go to the field, we see it in the eyes of the daycare workers and the parents. We see it in the eyes of the mayors and local administrators. I even love bringing our fellow Adarna House employees to the field and seeing them see it too. It’s a vision of a Philippines where, truly, no child is left behind. We’re going to keep going until it’s not just a vision, but reality.”
The story of Adarna House continues in upcoming essays. Like and follow us on Facebook and Instagram to catch the next release.