CBLD promotes developing both a reading and writing culture in local communities. It’s a fast-paced literature development program that trains community members to write contextually relevant content using market research, which identifies the genres that interest the community members. It also equips writers with basic skills in story development and book production.

Five steps in the CBLD process

• Market research to identify literature genres that interest the community
• Training for writers
• Writing and illustrating stories
• Editing stories
• Layout/typesetting and publishing stories in different formats

Why market research?

Communities are often offered literature without anyone asking them what they would prefer to read, which may lead to a lack of interest in the materials from community members. CBLD uses focus groups to identify what genres of literature a community prefers. Focus group participants identified by the local leaders comprise different age groups and professions in the community.

Market research from focus groups helps to ensure that the materials produced by the CBLD workshop will be appreciated and read by the community members. Genres play a particularly important role in developing a reading culture, as empowering people to choose what they read is important in helping them curate their reading and thus create a reading culture.

Some of the genres of interest that have been identified in past projects include:

• Folktales
• Practical/how to stories
• Adventure stories
• Fantasy stories
• Moral stories
• Bible stories

Here are some questions you can use as you conduct market research with focus groups in your local community:

• What book(s) have you read in the last 6 months or one year?
• What book(s) have you bought for yourself, child or friend in the last 6 months or one year?
• If you were to get into a place e.g. library, with all sorts of books, what title would you seek to read?
• If you were granted a chance to write a story, what would the title of that story be?

As you analyze the answers you receive, you can identify the top five genres that are of interest to your community.

Topics to cover in training for writers

How to write a good story, covering elements such as:

• Creating a title
• The beginning, middle, and end of a story
• The setting
• The characters
• The plot, and other components

Writing leveled stories—that is, stories tailored for different categories of readers:

• Beginning readers
• Intermediate readers
• Advanced readers

Writing a good description for the stories, including examples of what is and is not a good description.

Once the participants have understood these aspects, you can invite participants to respond to the question: if you are granted a chance to write a story, what would the title of that story be?

Specific instructions are given to writers to write the story with a specific reader in mind.

For example, we encourage them to write to their level and a story that would interest them.

The writers then get to choose the genres for their stories among the top five that had been selected.

On writing and illustrating stories, once the stories are written, the writers read their stories aloud with translations, one at a time, as both the consultants and other participants listen and suggest ways to improve on the stories based on what has been taught regarding writing a good story.

The improved stories are read aloud again to the group, which helps the writer to appreciate the journey to writing a good story, and any further suggestions are made, after which illustrations descriptions are done.

The descriptions take into account the level of the reader for which the story has been written.

Simple illustrations for beginners and increase in detail for the intermediate and advanced readers. All writers who are able to follow the instructions and suggestions to improve on or perfect their stories and illustrations become the CBLD authors for a particular project.

Editing stories

Initial editing of stories is done through peer or group editing, when stories are projected and read aloud and corrected by the group.

After the initial peer or group editing, the final editing is done post-workshop, mostly by an expert in the target language—someone who understands both its written and spoken form.

The editor is given instructions on what to look out for as they edit their stories, including writing conventions, spelling, punctuation, among others.

Training in typesetting and publishing

Among the participants invited to the CBLD workshop are people who already know how to use a computer. They are trained on how to use Bloom software, which they use to typeset the final stories and scan in the final and approved illustrations into the stories. (Bloom is a free publishing software that makes it easy for communities to create books.)

Once the final editing has been completed, the books are either printed or camera-ready PDFs are created for the publisher and/or as e-books in the Bloom library. Books can be published in different formats—such as storybooks with several titles in one book, comic books, big books for shared reading, among others.

Examples of CBLD in practice

Ugwele community in Uganda

This workshop took place over five days. It included time for market research, writer’s training, and book production. We identified five writers, two illustrators, and three editors from the community who produced 30 stories that were compiled into 23 booklets.

After the workshop, children began gathering every weekend for reading clubs with a facilitator who read the books, including some created in the workshop for the children in their language, as they also learned how to read.

Turkana community in northern Kenya

This workshop took over 10 days, including time for market research, writer’s training, and book production. We identified six writers who produced 25 stories compiled into 15 booklets.

After the workshop, the books are now being used by literacy class graduates who formed reading groups and meet together to read the stories on a weekly basis.

The previous examples come from the language communities that SIL and its partners often work with, but the principles of CBLD, that is market research, writer’s training, literature production, and literature distribution can be applied in many environments.

You may be able to adapt this program to work well in your own context, and we would encourage that. We have done a few CBLD programs on our own SIL, but we have also worked in partnership with groups such as World Vision, several Bible societies, and research aid and refugee organizations, as you can see from the table.

The positive is that the program gets literature into the hands of the community and can help build a reading culture, which is a desirable thing for any community.

But we must also acknowledge the downsides, and one is that our partners have been giving away the books and booklets for free, which can potentially lower the perceived value of books.

Another downside is that the local authors and publishers are not well compensated.

However, we are eager to improve this program, and you may be able to help us.

Potential partnerships and future innovations

We’d welcome partnerships with local publishers, which could enable opportunities to cultivate new readers who want to buy books. Writers can own their work and have a partnership with a publisher on rights and profits.

I’d like to invite you all to consider partnering with SIL to implement more CBLDs, as we promote a reading and writing culture in your community or the communities targeted by your publishing house.

Even where partnerships are not possible, I would like to call on you to consider ways you could do similar programs to open new markets, develop new authors, and more deeply root a reading culture in your community.

Together, we can help close the gap between literacy and readership. We can see more life-changing materials created in heart language and local context being read by more people, and in turn, we will witness stronger churches and more transformed societies.