T wenty-five participants -- mostly teachers from Catholic schools – recently attended the CFA seminar-workshop on “Writing Stories and Comics Scripts for Values Education”.  The workshop, held on April 28 to May 1, 2008 at the CFA Training Room, aimed at equipping participants with arts and skills in short story writing and comics scriptwriting, which they may use in classroom teaching as well as in  writing and editing assignments.

The workshop is the fifth in the series of seven seminars offered by CFA under Phase 2 of the Diocesan Media Training project supported by Aid to the Church in Need. Among the topics included in the four-day seminar workshop were: Story Conceptualization, Short Story Writing (specifically based on Gospel liturgical readings), Elements of Comics Scriptwriting, Captions and Dialogue, and New Trends in Comics Visualization. As part of their writing exercise, participants were asked to write stories and scripts for any CFA publication of their choice, including Gospel Komiks (Elementary), Gospel Komiks Magazine (High School), Baby Jesus and Jesus Magazine (all under the faith series), Pambata and Barkada Magazines (under the academic series).

The resource persons chosen for the workshop are highly experienced and multi-awarded in the field of development-oriented story/scriptwriting. These include Dr. Luis Gatmaitan, Writer-Director Clodualdo del Mundo, Jr., CFA editors/writers Nick Melgar, Reynato Vibiesca, Jericho Natividad, Noel de Leon and Cora Despabiladeras. CFA publications and staff have won numerous trophies and citations from the yearly Catholic Mass Media Awards.