It’s Raining Pencils! Donations Comes From All Over.

Makati City – Pencils of all sizes and colors continue to reach Black Pencil Project mail box according to Mon Corpuz, co-founder. Packages coming as far as Aklan (Visayas) reaches our temporary office, leaving the group flattered with the sheer support we are getting from completely strangers.

“It’s very humbling to open each package sent to us, mostly through one-day delivery parcel companies, it is not difficult to sense the sender’s sincerity, much more, the concept of urgency these packaged were given”. Corpuz revealed.

When asked how they learned about the project, people said they saw Black Pencil Project feature on TV, heard over AM radio or read from a magazine or newspaper article.

The Black Pencil Project’s one-pencil-at-a-time advocacy appealed to mass audience in late 2009, when they were featured in various media outfit during the time of Typhoon Ketsana to which the group remarkably spearheaded a mosquito campaign appealing for Pencil Drive (school-supply charity drive) along side with the multi-sectoral call for support to typhoon victims.

Most recent donation comes from a group of teachers in Meycauyan National High School headed by Ms. Lany Rosario. She told Black Pencil Project she learned the organization from noontime show Eat Bulaga and have asked her students early this year if they could help by donating pencils, which she will then turn over to Black Pencil Project secretariat. Last June 2, Ms. Rosario along with her colleagues from the national high school went to Manila to handover the box full of pencils and few knapsack bags to Black Pencil Project’s Program Director Mon Corpuz. The donation will be amongst to be shipped to Igcabugao Elementary School in Igbaras, Iloilo.

Earlier this June, Ms. Grace Velarde, a friend of Zer Cabatuan delivered another box of pencils and assorted school supplies to the temporary office in Makati. “It’s always heartwarming to received packages like these” said Cabatuan. “What’s more humbling is that they (donors) kept saying “we are sorry we can only give so little, when what we are receiving are boxes with hundreds of pencils!” he added.

The pencil advocacy started merely from a bag full of pencils in 2008. Now, the simple pencil idea is pushing hardwood to individuals as well as organizations around the world.