THE National Alliance of Reading Advocates (NARA), a group composed of readership advocates in the country and a project by the National Book Development Board (NBDB), held its first important NARA Milestone Meeting recently, where the provisional outline of the NARA Readers’ Agenda was presented.

The group also decried the lukewarm state of reading culture in the country, as shown in the country’s State of the Reading Nation (SORNA) for the second quarter of the year.

The alliance will work collaboratively in drafting and finalizing the NARA Readers’ Agenda, and hopes to finish it in time for the grand launch on November 16, 2024. Once fully ratified, NARA will then support activities and interventions in line with its contents, and shall form the basis of the NBDB’s readership interventions for the upcoming year, both as an individual readership advocacy agency and as the NARA secretariat.

The NARA Readers’ Agenda is a guidebook that will contain NARA’s concrete vision for readership in the Philippines based on its analysis of the state of the reading nation. In laying out advocacy areas, it will be able to concretely grasp and measure its influence on reading communities and the reading culture.

The second quarter SORNA, meanwhile, highlighted three key points, namely, the importance of community engagement and support networks, teacher training and professional development, and the issue of access to resources and materials. It also noted that efforts to boost reading should now extend to the farthest and underserved areas of the country to boost readership and spark a love for reading.

The National Research Council of the Philippines (NRCP), one of the organizations that attended the milestone meeting, earlier expressed its intention to work with the NBDB with regard to the quarterly SORNA, as expressed by NRCP Executive Director, Bernardo Sepeda, such as the provision of research assistance to NBDB members.

The NARA is a unified network anchored on a collaborative working environment in order to better spread the news on existing readership initiatives. This is a project that serves as an integral part of the NBDB’s ongoing efforts to boost readership, given declining reading scores among Filipinos.

Aside from the NRCP, more than 20 other organizations attended the meeting, such as the:

1. National Museum of the Philippines,
2. National Library of the Philippines,
3. AHA Learning Center,
4. Ayala Foundation, Inc.,
5. St. Mary’s Publishing,
6. Yellow Boat of Hope Foundation,
7. Libro Mo, Kaalam Ko Project,
8. The Inteligente Publishing, Inc.,
9. Association of Progressive and Orthodox Litterateurs and Literature Originators,
10. Pinoy Reading Buddies, Inc.,
11. Kuwento at Kultura à Paris,
12. St. Mary’s Publishing Corp.,
13. Pinoy Reads Pinoy Book,
14. Laguna Province Private Schools and Administrators Association,
15. The Storytelling Project,
16. Iloilo Provincial Library and Archives,
17. BINHI English Literacy Foundation,
18. Sadiri Publishing,
19. UST Library,
20. International Board on Books for Young People,
21. IBBY Ph, and
22. Anak han Sta. Rita.