Helping the Bishop of Alotau (through the Catholic Diocese of Cairns)

Harry Graepel and students in Cairns after loading a container bound for PNG

Harry Graepel and students in Cairns after loading a container bound for PNG

Harry Graepel, science teacher at St Mary’s Catholic College in Cairns, reports that two 30 cubic metre shipping containers of educational materials have been sent from Cairns to Alotau (map is here. this year and a third is ready to go.

His latest report is here.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Children at Ulutuya school on Goodenough Island display the books they received.

Children at Ulutuya school on Goodenough Island display the books they received.

The contents of the containers were destined for Santa Maria High School, Watuluma, and to Ulutuya Primary School.

Among the materials sent to Santa Maria were 60 plus desk top computers for the new computer laboratory built at the school by Ausaid.

With 45 chairs, library shelving and over two hundred boxes of library books were moved to Ulutuya.

The library at Ulutuya school on Goodenough Island . . . the books and furniture were collected by the diocese of Cairns and the transport paid for by the Peter Oconnor Foundation.

The second container was filled amongst other things, with 375 desks and chairs destined for a new primary school on Misima Island (see map).

A third shipping container containing about A$30,000 worth (when new) of nursing textbooks donated to Harry Graepel by a lecturer at QUT Brisbane is destined for St. Barnabas’s Nursing School in Alotau.

This container will also respond to a request received from a Vocational School in Bolubolu, Goodenough Island, to help them set up a library at their College and provide them with ten electric sewing machines. There will also be tens of thousands of dollars worth of science and mathematics textbooks for Santa Maria High school, but the bulk of the container will be filled with more desks and chairs to accommodate the Year 11 and 12 students that have recently been added to the school’s intake.

Students at St. Thomas’s Primary School, Mareeba, have “adopted” a primary school on Goodenough Island. The third container is expected to transport the donations collected by St. Thomas’s for this PNG school.

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