A Call For Filipino Short Stories And Illustrators

Received this email in my inbox, care of Breaking The Silence, who forwarded it to me when she received it from her relative:

Hi guys! I know I'm spamming you again and it's off-season so I really shouldn't be doing this, but a friend is asking for help for her school project, and where else can I find great writers (and illustrators, I guess?) than NaNo? :)

Here we go: ===========================

Dear friends, as some of you may already know, for my internship/research I'll be working with small educational technology devices at an underserved site in the Philippines. Focus is math and literacy for grade 1/grade 2 level. There are already existing applications but since the devices were piloted in the US, most of the materials are in English. Basically, I'm looking for people who are willing to write short stories in Filipino or illustrate.

I hope you guys can forward this to people you know who may be interested in this worthwhile project. This really means a lot to me. Thanks.

--
I'll be deploying the teachermate to an underserved site in Pinas. (I'm still in the process of finalizing the exact details with the partner site.) The teachermate is basically an educational mobile device. It is currently targeted towards teaching math and improving literacy at the grade 1/grade 2 level.

There are existing applications that will be deployed to the site in the Philippines. However, a big concern is the literacy part. Since the teachermate was initially created for US children, the e-books are in English. My target is to come up with at least 20 stories in Filipino for the Philippine audience. Unfortunately, this is out of my expertise. I was hoping you could help me find:

* people who are willing to write short stories in Filipino. It doesn't have to be that long -- a minimum of 100 words is OK since these are grade 1/grade 2 level children
* people who are willing to do some illustrations based on the stories. The initial deployment is at the 3rd week of March. Not all of the stories are targeted to be digitized by then. Again, since the stories are short, this would require around 4 or 5 illustrations per story

(Note: It doesn't have to be the same person writing and illustrating.)

Unfortunately, we will not be able to pay anything other than warm fuzzy feelings for contributing. However, volunteers will be recognized for their efforts. Any stories or illustrations they create will be attributed to them.

Thanks! If you find someone who's interested, please have them contact me directly via my school e-mail address (msogono(at)stanford(dot)edu).

--
Mela Sogono
MA Learning, Design, & Technology
Stanford University, Class of 2009

===========================

This is due around February, and she's targeting around 20 stories. This should be a good post-NaNo exercise.

Thanks guys! Oh, and if you have similar announcements that you'd want to share with the group, just send me an email about it, so I can email/spam the group. ^^;

Cheers!

Tina
ML for the Philippines
http://www.pinoywrimos.com