ST Thomas More College, Sunnybank’s donation of school resources has been welcomed by three high schools in Papua New Guinea.
A 6.5m container filled with more than 100 each of chairs and tables, filing cabinets, 160 boxes of education resources, 40 pairs of football boots, bicycles, footballs and clothing arrived in the river port town of Kiunga in the North Fly district of the Western Province of PNG.
Waiting to unload and distribute the goods were representatives of the Montfort Catholic Mission and former PNG government minister Warren Dutton.
Mr Dutton said almost all of the donated resources would be something new for the three high schools in the area.
Growing mining and liquid nitrogen gas industries in the region has led to a rapidly expanding population from 7000 in 2002 to as many as 30,000 today.
College library assistant Angela Lee said with the introduction of Year 7 to Secondary, it was time for some housekeeping and, with the help of the college’s heads of departments, a huge cleanout of no longer used resources was conducted.
She said out of this grew the college’s Caring for Kiunga Project.
“We were fortunate our principal, Peter Elmore, had a contact in PNG who was able to arrange for a container to be delivered to our school,” she said.
“Staff, students, parents and surrounding schools were notified of the intended project and responded with their generosity.”
Angela said it included many Year 10 students who were studying a Certificate in Volunteering, and they put in a lot of extra time to help load the container.
“Every lunch hour, for approximately six weeks, I would always have anywhere from two to six students prepared to give up their lunch hour to help pack the container,” she said.
An added bonus to come from the project was a re-connection between the college, which is celebrating its 40th anniversary, and the Brothers of St Gabriel.
One of the schools to benefit from the generous donation was St Gabriel’s Technical Secondary School in Kiunga, whose headmaster, Brother Gabriel revealed to Mr Elmore the brothers were once destined to be the founding order of St Thomas More College.
The college was the first secondary college in the Brisbane archdiocese established without a religious order.
It opened with a lay principal and staff in 1974.
“This happened because the Brothers of St Gabriel (for whatever reasons) did not follow through with their original offer to be the founding religious order of the college,” Mr Elmore said.
“We are in the process of writing our history and have discovered correspondence from the Brothers of St Gabriel stating that they would be sending their brothers from Papua New Guinea to establish the new school in Sunnybank.
“We are fulfilled that our paths have been able to cross again.”
