What is the Yangis Community School Teacher Training project?
The Yangis Community School Teacher Training project aims to give local people in the remote location of Yangis a higher education in order to give them the skills and empowerment to re-open and teach at a school in their community.
Through the joint effort of Baptist Union of Papua New Guinea and The Oaktree Foundation, eight local people from Yangis were given the opportunity to study for their teaching qualifications at the University in Madang. After two years of study, they received their degrees and now have the qualifications to not only help their local community by re-opening a school which has been closed for many years, but also to contribute to PNG’s economy and earn an income.
Students in Yangis.
Background
There were several setbacks with this Project. However, it is firstly important to note that the school did re-open whilst most of the teachers were still studying. The Yangis Community School reopened under the supervision of one teacher who finished his studies earlier. He was determined to ensure the children of Yangis received the education they deserved and so taught up to 300 children during a semester, with some help from government-appointed teachers.
The government teachers have since left Yangis as a result of the lack of resources and adequate living and working conditions. However, the Yangis community is determined to re-open the school permanently and the trained teachers are beginning to return home.
Another setback involved clan conflict in Yangis, which resulted in several deaths in the community. This caused the newly trained teachers to be afraid to return home and so are waiting for the conflict to subside. Also, Oaktree-trained teachers were waiting for funds from the government to pay for their flights back to Yangis, which are quite expensive. The funding for this did not come and therefore several of the teachers have been so far unable to return home.
The major setback, however, has been the limited resources available to the teachers awaiting them on their return. They do not have houses close to the school, nor any teaching materials or adequate conditions to work in. This has caused them to not want to return to Yangis and instead seek employment in less remote and underdeveloped areas.
While there have been significant hurdles with this project, 30o kids enrolled in school because of one teacher, Rex Kipu. Oaktree will continue to work with Baptist Union of Papua New Guinea over the coming years to address these issues and make the school more sustainable.
Rex Kipu- Teacher at the Yangis Community School
In March 2010, I travelled to PNG with two other Oaktree volunteers to conduct our annual project monitoring trip. PNG is a startling place to travel to for the first time; Port Moresby can be dangerous and unsettling, and the remote areas where the majority of the population lives are extremely isolated. Flying into Yangis in our tiny five-seater plane, landing on a landing strip which seemed impossibly small, we felt completely cut off from the rest of the world. Recently, there had been clan conflict in Yangis, which is frighteningly common in the Eastern Highlands. Several members of the community had been killed, and it was expected that those whose families had suffered would seek revenge. Instead, the opposite happened.
Sitting with the rest of the Yangis community in the shade of trees near the landing strip and the school, the local pastor got up to say a prayer and speak about Oaktree and Baptist Union’s work in training local people to become teachers and re-open the school. A man soon stood up to address the people gathered there; he was the father of the most recent man to have been killed in conflict. As he spoke, a translator explained that he was telling everyone he did not seek revenge on the people who had murdered his son; instead, he urged the community to put aside their clan differences and come together to work towards the re-opening of the school. He knew that teachers would not want to stay in Yangis if they thought it was too dangerous, and the most important thing was the school.
The fact that this man had put aside his feelings, and indeed the cultural expectation for continued conflict, to encourage others to work together for what was more important for the community as a whole, was truly inspiring. These are the little things that tell us that working in places like Yangis is worth it; it’s up to the people there to carry forward development, and I am amazed and humbled by the fact that something as simple as a school and training teachers have played a part in this.
- Celia Boyd, PNG Country Manager
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