Smart touches kids’ lives via storytelling project

CEBU, Philippines - Eight-year-old Ian McRonald Aleonar gets up at dawn even before his parents can rouse him. He puts on an oversized freshly laundered brown polo shirt, a gift from his grandmother.

Diminutive and short for his age, he looks for leftover food his mother prepared the night before. Failing to find any, he steps outside. 

Around the family’s rented shanty, which he shares with his mother, his father (who works as a janitor at the pier), and four other brothers, the muddy neighborhood slowly comes to life as smoke from the burning garbage billows. The stench of rotting refuse is overpowering. 

He looks around, unable to hide his excitement despite the hunger pangs. It is not the promise of fresh loot that the garbage collectors dumped overnight that thrills him.

Today he will not be scavenging with the other kids.  Today will be different.  He will be going to a storytelling session with the rest of the kids in the neighborhood. He arrives at the school gates early. 

For five straight days, Ian McRonald and close to a hundred children living near the Inayawan dumpsite in Cebu City were inspired by the annual Summer Storytelling Project organized through the partnership of the Community Nazarene Christian School in Inayawan and Smart Communications, Inc. (Smart). 

The project is also supported by Pru Life UK, as well as University of San Juan Recoletos’ SACRED and University of San Carlos’ Pathways, which are both student organizations.

The sessions hope to improve the learning of children through values-laden stories, and help them discover the joys of reading and learning. A trained team of volunteers comprising of close to a hundred young professionals and students from Cebu universities and youth catechists helped them out this year.

“We inspire and encourage our children to give time for reading stories with life lessons,” says Shyder Samson, registrar at the Community Nazarene Christian School. “After all, our children are our future church.”

Simultaneously in Mabolo, the St. Joseph the Patriarch Parish and Mabolo Elementary School partnered with Smart to hold storytelling sessions to a hundred grade school pupils with the help of the parish youth volunteers. Through the parish-organized Sunday feeding program, Smart saw the opportunity to impart positive values to children, and encouraged the youth to give their time. 

“We tapped our catechism volunteers by training them for storytelling,” says Fr. Joselito Enriquez Danao of the Mabolo Parish. “Our ultimate goal is to hold storytelling sessions to street children in the parish and to involve their parents as well.”

Ian’s mother Editha sees the program’s enormous impact on his youngest son. Ian has been out of school and scavenging ever since, but, she says that Ian’s eyes light up when she asks him about the stories they hear during the sessions. 

“I like the story of the crocodile and the snake fighting for territory,” Ian McRonald says in the local dialect. He says it teaches him about generosity and respect for the elderly.

“He looks like he’s been schooled. He comes home from the storytelling session and he retells the stories aloud to his four siblings. My eldest son would tease and ask him if he aspires to be a lawyer,” says Editha. “I am now encouraged to send him back to school.”

Frankie Mendez, president of the Mabolo Parish Youth Coordinating Council, a teacher at the Mabolo Elementary School and storytelling volunteer credits the program’s success to the stakeholders’ commitment to the project, which reinforces healthy and open communication.

“It is a humanitarian extension for kids. There is the opportunity for them to learn more and improve their reading skills and to develop their literacy. It also helps them imbibe values that, not even TV or any other technology today can offer,” Mendez says. “Nothing beats storytelling.”

In fact, after five days of storytelling, Ian McRonald has started attending the community’s Sunday school. The attendance has doubled with more kids from the storytelling sessions attending the early Sunday morning church school. 

“The program has inspired them. It is a big boost for us now to reach out to more kids and help them spiritually,” adds Samson.

“We hope to sustain this program by linking with other parish-based and church-based organizations and to continue engaging our students and youth volunteers,” says Atty. Jane Paredes, Public Affairs Manager for VisMin. (FREEMAN)