Project Tala
Project Tala is a long term initiative of Talang Dalisay to create and facilitate programs for special needs students with numerous partner schools through storytelling and life skills lesson plans. The Talang Dalisay team conceptualizes, writes, and illustrates our own children’s books that cover mental health topics for these students. Additionally, we collaborate with educators to create feasible and practical lesson plans that our volunteers and members host to be able to help alleviate workload for teachers. We also have particular special sub-projects under Project Tala, which include free computer & online literacy programs for teachers, students, and parents, a bi-monthly mental health booklet launch (a free physical printed guide for resources in the Philippines), and the open fundraiser and volunteer program for folks outside of the TD team who would like to join us in hosting project Tala.
IN NUMBERS…
Project Tala has reached twenty three schools, three thousand students, and four barangays (villages) in and out of Metro Manila!
For Filipino PWD Scholars
For Filipino PWD Scholars is a long term initiative of Talang Dalisay of research and fundraising to help the lives of Filipino Persons with Disabilities through education and therapy funding.
Talang Dalisay started out this project through fundraisers through selling T-Shirts for our first special needs scholar, Jochelle Dacanay. Jochelle’s mom, Jacqueline, reached out to us in early 2017 to ask for resources for monetary funding to help send her to school. Our executive team at that time decided it was a good idea to brainstorm on ideas for fundraising. We created TD T-Shirts, and have been doing so consistently every two years. Our merchandise has always been focused on serving our PWD Scholars with our Partner Schools.
In the year 2021, we started a centralized PWD School & Center directory for most of Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao. Our team realized that the Philippines does not have its own centralized database of special needs centers and schools. This is a project to help families, parents, and guardians that reach out to us for nearby resources. Every month, we aim to add even micro resources and spaces that exist for people to reach out. You may view our updated directory here.
Both the PWD Fundraisers and Directory project are currently still ongoing.
IN NUMBERS…
We have produced five versions of our merchandise for PWD scholars, selling over four thousand t-shirts and other products (stickers, sweaters) and have raised over two hundred thousand pesos from these products, which in turn helped around twenty scholars with their education funding since 2017.
We have seven people working on researching to renew and look closely at our PWD Directory to make sure that it is up to date. We have over one hundred resources listed thus far.
Filipino Artists for Mental Conservation
Talang Dalisay is the beneficiary organization of the New York based photographer collective & gallery, Worlds Through Minds.
Worlds Through Minds is a gallery and collective of photographers and artists that use photography and other mediums to advocate for mental health, mental illness, and culture. WTM was born out of a grant from the University of California, started by Macy Castaneda Lee, TD & WTM’s founder. The gallery in the bay area commissioned eight Filipino artists that presented work surrounding these aforementioned issues and told their personal stories. The gallery was able to raise three thousand dollars from entrance fees and was able to be used in Talang Dalisay’s long term initiative, Project Tala.
Today, Worlds Through Minds functions as a New York based collective that hosts events and free workshops, focusing on photography and storytelling.
IN NUMBERS…
Worlds Through Minds has worked with twenty photographers in New York City and has collaborated with spaces and organizations like Brooklyn Film Camera, the International Center of Photography, VERCI NYC, Penumbra Foundation, and various independent photo studios.
Webinars & Workshops
Since 2016, we have hosted in person workshops and webinars in Zoom and collaborated with guest speakers to be able to host various topics on mental health, wellness with an intersection to current social issues in the Philippines and the world.
Talang Dalisay also participates in public speaking events and workshops when invited from schools, organizations, and companies. Current executive directors for the running year usually partake and speak on behalf of the non-profit. For the most part, TD founder Macy Castaneda Lee usually represents the organization in these speaking engagements.
TD has represented its advocacy in various platforms over the past seven eight years in spaces like Google, Town & Country, the New York Hall of Science, the George Washington University, the University of the Philippines, among others.
IN NUMBERS…
TD has worked and spoken for seventy different non-profits, organizations, and companies since 2016.
TD has hosted fifty in-person workshops & webinars spanning over twenty different topics spanning psychology, mental health, education, and social justice issues.
