NCCA urges Mindanao institutions to submit project proposals

THE National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) is urging individuals and organizations in Mindanao to submit proposals for arts and culture projects as they opened the 2019 Call for Project Proposals for the Competitive Grants Program.

The NCCA Competitive Grants Program is an annual program through the National Endowment Fund for Culture and the Arts (NEFCA), which provides financial support to individuals and organizations committed in reviving, strengthening and promoting the Philippine culture and arts subject to proposals which are aligned with the priority projects defined by NCCA.

According to Hobart Savior, ExeCon member of the National Committee on Cinema, only 34 projects from Mindanao were approved in 2018.

“That is quite lower than those that applied in Manila, and perhaps in Visayas. The center, which is the Manila area, and perhaps in Luzon, they got really the biggest amount or chunk of the grants,” Savior said.

“It is just because many of our institutions have not really submitted proposals. That’s why NCCA really strive hard to conduct technical assistance on proposal writing so that artists and art institutions can really submit,” he added.

Dr. Pilar Banaag, vice head of the National Committee on Communication, said they conducted a proposal writing workshop on Wednesday, July 11, at Limketkai Luxe Hotel, Cagayan de Oro City, to help address the matter of the very low proposals coming from Mindanao.

“We need this for the reason that we in Mindanao will also... to come out and to showcase that we have culture, we have our way of presenting the culture and the traditions that we have as far as Mindanao is concerned,” Banaag said.

Savior, for his part, said that there is a need

to empower the artists and cultural workers of Mindanao “who could really create programs to put forward what is really Mindanao.”

The annual Call for Project Proposals for the year 2019 is anchored mainly on the NCCA vision: Filipino culture as the wellspring of national and global well-being (Ang kailangang Filipino ay bukal ng kagalingang pambansa at pandaigdig) and aligned with the Philippine Development Plan 2017-2022: Chapter 7 on Culture (Promoting Philippine Culture and Values).

Interested applicants - Filipino individuals as well as civil society organizations, indigenous people’s organizations/groups, local government units, government agencies, state universities/colleges and public schools - should submit their project proposals until July 31.

Projects are categorized per Subcommission: Arts, Heritage, Cultural Dissemination, and Cultural Communities and Traditional Arts. Project briefs as well as guidelines and requirements can be viewed and downloaded at the NCCA website.