austraLasia 823
Kumgi PNG: 800 Graduates, Better Citizens and Many Good Christians!
KUMGI (PNG): 5th April '04 -- Fr. Vaclav Klement has just completed a visit to the Salesian community and its work at Kumgi in the Central Highlands of PNG and describes it as a real 'witness of hardworking, joyful, prayerful and united SDB community-in-diversity, that extends also to the Sisters of St. Anne, to Japanese volunteers, lay teachers and staff (22), present students (277, including 90 boarders)'. By the end of last year some 800 graduates of Don Bosco Technical Institute had completed their course with the hope of passing into useful roles as honest citizens and good Christians.
Simbu Province, where we find the town of Kumgi, in the Central Highlands of PNG, is positioned in the middle bracket of Papua New Guinea’s provinces according to most indicators of health, nutrition, education and income. However, in many other ways, it is among the least developed. Simbu Province is highly populated (31 persons per square kilometre), with little arable land, no large scale commercial agriculture and a very limited urban sector. There are very few employment opportunities and, as a result, emigration is increasing; one fifth of the population, usually the young men, move out in search of employment or a better life, usually to the towns. There is considerable dissatisfaction and unrest within the province and they export this to the towns in the form of rascalism.
Enter the Salesians! Beginning in 1994, by 1996 they had a technical-vocational school (Don Bosco Institute of Technology) up and running at Kumgi in the diocese of Kundiawa, and by the beginning of 2004 it had totalled some 800 graduates: fitters and turners, carpenters, draughtsmen, electricians.
With the praises heaped on them by their Visitor, the busy community is now facing up to its immediate challenges and decisions, which include a launching of the Salesian Cooperators and Past Pupils, future directions for the school, which has drawn the favourable interest of Government both provincial and national, and greater ability to be a bridge for ex-students as they seek employment and move to an environment so different from the one experienced within Salesian care.
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