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‘Different sense of accomplishment’: Youngsters fulfill dream of becoming authors

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Rick Olivares

<div class="embed-wrap"><figure data-feedback="fb:likes,fb:comments"><img alt="Through Vivita – a Baguio-based after-school creative space – Alekz Yuriel (left) and Bianca Tulio achieved what seemed like an impossible dream. Handout" src="https://sa.kapamilya.com/absnews/abscbnnews/media/2022/life/04/09/20220409-youngsters-authors.jpg"/><figcaption>Through Vivita – a Baguio-based after-school creative space – Alekz Yuriel (left) and Bianca Tulio achieved what seemed like an impossible dream. Handout</figcaption></figure></div>Meet two of the youngest book authors you will meet – 11-year old Alekz Yuriel from Baguio City and 15-year old Bianca Tulio from Davao del Sur. Through Vivita – a Baguio-based after-school creative space – Yuriel and Tulio achieved what seemed like an impossible dream.Yuriel wrote and drew a 44-page magazine-sized book titled, “The Friendly Elf”, while Tulio penned the 92-page “Nadia”.“’The Friendly Elf’ is about an elf named Dew who meets a human named Elly and they become friends and go on an adventure,” summed up Yuriel.The whole book took almost five months for him to complete with the help of his Vivita mentor, Audrey Balagat. As for Tulio, “Nadia”, which is all prose, took a year to complete. “My story is about a girl who is experiencing not only the pains of growing up but also some mysteries,” she said.“I would send the chapters to my mentor, Dani Go, and she would send it back with instructions on what to fix or re-write.”According to Vivita country manager Gabe Mercado, all the heavy lifting is done by the youngsters, with their assigned mentors only providing guidance. “It is important that the children learn to discover and do things on their own,” said Mercado. “There is a different sense of accomplishment and achievement.“Here at Vivita, we provide that creative space for youngsters to work on ideas they have with minimal supervision from the mentors. We watch over them but the kids do all the work. And having their books published on site really adds to their confidence and skills.”While Yuriel lives in Baguio, Tulio hails from Davao del Sur and she joined the program by meeting on Zoom with her mentor. “What I like about working in Vivita is they take us kids seriously,” shared Tulio. “If you say, want to write about witches and sharks, most people will say, ‘no.’ But in Vivita, they never say no, they just say, ‘go do it.’”“It is important that we allow them to grow and learn through their own work,” Mercado said. “We will not curb a child’s ideas. We want them to believe in themselves and their ideas. We want their imagination and creativity to grow.”Although the kids printed their books in Vivita, they aren’t mass-produced. At most, 10 copies are printed.“Book publishing isn’t the only thing we do at Vivita. Some try cooking and baking, some created their own products like pins, t-shirts designs, bags, keychains, and other products that they can sell or market. Your imagination is the limit,” Mercado said.“I hope that this will be the start for my son, Alekz,” Delmarie Camara added.Like Yuriel, Tulio hopes that with “Nadia”, it will be her start to follow the footsteps of her literary inspirations John Grisham and Roald Dahl.

Through Vivita – a Baguio-based after-school creative space – Alekz Yuriel, 11, and Bianca Tulio, 15, achieved what seemed like an impossible feat.