The Creation and Production of Mother Tongue Books

One of my friends in the publishing industry has taken interest on the Bulilit Books-Project LEARN Series. I have these questions answered as requested. Sharing it here in the blog, because, sharing is caring!

1. Could you tell me more about the NCPPC? What prompted them to revive this series in Filipino and translate them into Cebuano and Hiligaynon? 

The NCPPC is a foundation and has two main thrusts: nutrition and health education. For more than four decades, they have been publishing materials and teaching resources to help parents, teachers, daycare workers and social workers in the nutrition and health education of children. They have bread products too that are packed with micronutrients. They have adopted public schools in Luzon and Visayas. While feeding kids age 3 - 10 years old, they provide training and instruction on good nutrition, health and hygiene to parents, teachers and community workers (daycare and social workers). In conducting the training, they have modules, reading materials and resources designed and published by their teams, staff and commissioned professionals.

Because health and well being is developmental and systemic, they thought of reviving the Bulilit Books, circa 1976-1982, to address the mental, moral/ethical and values development of children. Thus, they planned PROJECT LEARN.

PROJECT LEARN is a project that is aimed at creating books for k-3 learners addressing reading skills and comprehension development and the MTB MLE program of the DepEd. It has three phases: research and development; writing, editing and revising; and post-production.

The adopted or recipient schools of NCPPC were the first to acquire the books as part of the foundation's programs on good nutrition and health education. They are also selling the books in different markets.

2. How are they being distributed? Retail? Government purchases and donations? School adoption?

The adopted or recipient schools of NCPPC were the first to acquire the books as part of the foundation's programs on good nutrition and health education. They are also selling the books in different markets.

3. Now that the books have been produced, what challenges do you face in terms of sales and distribution?

NCPPC does not have a marketing team that sells in the open market like Lampara. Since it is a foundation, they have limited budget for this kind of distribution. The most that they can do is to have DepEd approve the books as supplementary materials so that schools, public and private alike, can buy them. News is, the Bulilit Books-Project LEARN Series is on the second review by the DepEd. Hopefully, it gets approved!