Construction and setting up of the first facilities for CANVAS’ Tumba-Tumba Children’s Museum of Philippine Art continues. As you can see from the pictures above, significant progress has been made on Leeroy New’s gallery installation since our report last June. We’re still hopeful that we can have the gallery turned over by November or early December. But definitely, it should be open for public viewing in time for our planned “If Trees Could Talk” International Art Biennale in February 2024.

Also set for installation by November will be monumental installations based on “The Tree Huggers”, a painting by Elmer Borlongan rendered as 15-foot sculptures by Lito Mondejar.

These will be permanent fixtures of the Museum, and collectively serve as an iconic backdrop for the Biennale.

And, in preparation still for the Biennale, construction is also now underway for two key facilities critical to our operations and service: “Tawag”, the Museum’s public restroom, and “Kulandong”, a modest multi-purpose facility which will temporarily serve as the office, storage area and kitchen of Tumba-Tumba, at least until full-fledged facilities are built in the coming few years.

Finally, we are pleased to let you know that we have also engaged the services of a professional fundraising company, Akubo, to prepare our strategic plan for a capital fundraising campaign for Tumba-Tumba. Akubo is led by its President, Marianne “Mayan” G. Quebral, a senior Development Consultant who specializes in Fundraising, Resource Mobilization, Non-Profit Management and Strategic Planning with over 3 decades of experience in progressive leadership roles. She is a pioneer in fundraising and trained at The Fund Raising School in Indiana, U.S.A. Mayan served as lead consultant for Venture for Fund Raising, a non-profit she co-founded in 1999 to provide fundraising training, mentoring and research for the non-profit sector. While at Venture, Mayan trained over 1,000 development professionals in over 24 countries. She also led gift giving motivation researches in the Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia, Pakistan, Nepal, India and Bangladesh. Mayan has authored The Fund Raiser’s Guide to Fund Raising and Fund Raising 101.

We will be looking to raise around Three Hundred Million Pesos to build the rest of the Museum facilities, and a portion of the raised amount will be allocated to an endowment fund to help assure both CANVAS’ and Tumba-Tumba’s long-term sustainability. We are presently preparing the capital fundraising kit and communications materials, and will launch the campaign in the first quarter of 2024.