On the grass plains on a plateau 14km from the mighty Sepik River, in northern PNG, there is a new school that has been established at the request of local villagers.

St Marcellin Champagnat Technical High School operates in classrooms, owned by the local primary school, which are built in the style of an Australian backyard shed. They are hot and often have mud floors. Marist Solidarity Australia provided the community there with a reasonable tank water supply in 2006 to take account of the dry period between June and November each year.

There are 240 secondary boarding students at the High School crowding the Primary students out of their classrooms. The girls live in ‘bush material’ dormitories and the boys are accommodated in the old machinery shed of the former ‘mission’ complex.

The staff is comprised of a community of three Melanesian Marist Brothers and five local lay teachers. This school is a Marist initiative to serve the needs of very poor families from an area that does not have a secondary education facility. The children are not selected for further schooling and so fall further and further behind in the poverty race.

 

We will seek funding assistance for two double classroom blocks and three teachers’ houses from international funding agencies.

• $50,000 will build a double classroom block because the local people do much of the construction
• $30,000 will build a small three bedroom 10m x 10m teacher’s house
  

Marist Solidarity Australia has relationships with funding agencies who are interested in forming a partnership to advance the needs of St Marcellin School. We need to be able to contribute about 30% to any international funding arrangement in such a co-financing proposal. Some of this will come as ‘in-kind’ contributions from the Burui community themselves. The rest will need to be a contribution in cash from Marists in Australia.