Cultural work on the ground

By Noel Galon de Leon

On August 20, I was invited by the National Book Development Board (NBDB) to speak at the 3rd Book Nook Conference in Iloilo City. The invitation alone was an honor, but standing there, sharing stories from Iloilo and Guimaras with fellow workers in culture was more than a privilege. It felt like a homecoming, a reminder that the small things we do in our communities’ matter and that they are part of something far bigger than ourselves. From the very beginning of my lecture, I made one thing clear: there is no secret to cultural work. It is not a formula one learns, nor a title one wears like a medal. Cultural work is devotion. It is a kind of daily prayer that manifests in service, patience, and persistence. It is rarely glamorous. More often, it is exhausting, quiet, and invisible. But it is this invisibility that makes it sacred.

Many of the participants I met at the conference hesitated when I called them cultural workers. Some laughed it off, saying they were simply “looking after books” in their book nook sites. But I reminded them: every hour you spend letting a child hold a book, every page you introduce to a young mind, every story you invite your community to listen to, that is cultural work. It may not look like publishing novels or writing poetry, but without you, none of that can survive. You are building the soil from which culture grows.

In academic terms, this is what scholars call “everyday cultural labor.” It is often unseen and unacknowledged, the kind of work no award-giving body recognizes. Yet, without it, nothing else can flourish. No book could take root, no reading habit could be nurtured, no child’s imagination could be sparked. This is why I insist: we are all cultural workers.

But cultural work cannot be measured by projects completed or books distributed. Its true measure lies in moments that resist quantification, when a child sounds out her first word; when a young boy sees his own people reflected in the pages of a story; when a village gathers to share memory, song, and laughter. These are not “small” moments. They are seismic shifts in the lives of individuals and communities. And they are worth more than any statistic.

Still, I wrestle with questions that haunt me: At a time when poverty deepens and hunger gnaws at millions of Filipinos, do books still hold power? In places torn apart by war, can a single book still be a source of hope for children whose bellies are empty, whose lives are torn by violence? These are not rhetorical questions. They are wounds we carry as cultural workers, forcing us to ask: what meaning does our work hold?

I once had the chance to help decide where a library should be built under Room to Read. I chose Guimaras, my home. More specifically, I chose Kati-kati, an Ati community. It was not a difficult decision. I knew their needs. I knew their dreams. And I also knew their dreams were painfully modest.

When I asked the children of Kati-kati what they hoped for, many of them said the same thing: to go to Iloilo and work as “timbang.” I tried to hide my tears as they spoke. There is nothing wrong with wanting to be a timbang, but I could not ignore the weight behind their words. Why was this the only dream available to them? Why was dreaming bigger denied them? That moment has stayed with me, a reminder that hunger is not just of the body, it is also of the imagination.

A similar experience broke me during our Sari-sari Bookstore project in Molo, Iloilo City. We placed zines, chapbooks, and storybooks beside packs of noodles and snacks inside small sari-sari stores. I asked the children what they would choose if they had money: the books or the noodles. Their answer was immediate—noodles. Because they were hungry.

That moment crushed me. I thought I understood. I thought I was prepared. But seeing it, hearing it, feeling the raw honesty of their hunger, I wept. I realized then that books alone cannot answer everything. But also, that books must still remain part of the answer. If hunger robs children of the chance to dream, then stories are one of the few ways we can remind them that another life, another future, is possible.

But the reality is that not everyone gets the chance. When I asked the Ati community in Guimaras why they had not applied for the NBDB Book Nook Project, their answer was disarming in its simplicity: “They don’t reach us. What is NBDB anyway?”

How can we expect communities without internet, without stable signal, without access to the very channels where opportunities are announced—to participate? It is not just about lack of connectivity. It is about invisibility. It is about exclusion.

This is why I say cultural work cannot end with setting up book nooks or distributing resources. We must go to the communities who cannot reach us. We must go to those who are always left behind. Because what is the point of our work if those who hunger most for books, for hope, for knowledge, are the very ones excluded from it?

And yes, it is shameful. Shameful that institutions with the means to buy books often receive more, while the children who cannot afford a single one remains empty-handed. Shameful that those most in need remain unheard, unseen, untouched by programs meant to empower them.

But shame, if we allow it, can be a spark. It can ignite a deeper sense of urgency. It can remind us that we must do more, that we must go farther, that we must widen the circle until no child is left standing outside.

This is the lesson I carry from the Sari-sari Bookstore, from the Ati children of Kati-kati, from every child who has chosen noodles over books because of hunger: cultural work is not about what we accomplish alone. It is about who remains unreached, unseen, unserved. It is about asking the harder questions: Who is still waiting? Who is still excluded? Who have we failed to hear?

Cultural work, in its truest sense, is not about us. It is about them, the children, the communities, the dreams too often silenced by poverty. And until they are included, our work is not finished.

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Noel Galon de Leon is a writer and educator at University of the Philippines Visayas, where he teaches in both the Division of Professional Education and U.P. High School in Iloilo. He serves as an Executive Council Member of the National Commission for Culture and the Arts-National Committee on Literary Arts.