Ang Aking Kapitbahay

This the first page of the 12-page comics entitled Ang Aking Kapitbahay: Kwento ng Isang Bakwit (My neighbor: An Evacuee's Story). I will upload the pdf file at [link] I thought I lost the files for this one. Imagine my joy when I saw this in the piles in my room. I first made this to help out my sister who is a human rights lawyer. I did it for the prize of slices of pizza because it is for my sister. It is in Filipino and I had to wrangle with the language. I did this using pen brush then photoshop.

Some big wigs saw what I did and decided to include it into something bigger.

This is included at the Peace Education Teaching Exemplars for Elementary Schools Grades 4-6.

That is a textbook teaching about peace and tolerance. And for the first time, they used a comics format to tell a story on the consistency of human rights; whether you are an internally-displaced person or otherwise, your rights still hold ground. This book is published by the Philippine Department of Education, Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process with the help of Unicef and the Australia Aid.

I was told that this will be distrubuted to 49,000 public schools in the country and one quipped that the readers will number into the millions. Wow. The people who organized this book said that it would be the comics that these children will be definitely reading because of its accessibility.

I'm happy that the raw files popped into my life again. I'm happier that I am part of a venture in education and lessons on peace and tolerance. No project will beat this for quite some time.