A shipping container ready for the Cook Islands!
01 April 2003
Kangan Batman TAFE staff members loading the container.
On Tuesday 29 April, from 9.00a.m, Work for the Dole participants will help load a 20-foot shipping container with donated equipment ready for the Cook Islands at Kangan Batman TAFE’s Moreland Campus.
Six Work for the Dole participants on a project sponsored by Kangan Batman TAFE have helped out in a big way. They took part in a project that will provide educational material and other invaluable equipment to assist in the implementation of a community learning centre in Ngatangiia, on the island of Rarontonga, the Cook Island’s main island.
Work for the Dole is a program where job seekers can become involved in helping their communities while undertaking a mutual obligation activity in exchange for their New Start or Youth Allowance payments. Work for the Dole is funded by the Commonwealth Government through the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations.
The participants of the project have collected 180 boxes of donated equipment which includes among other items:
- 1,145 books (including text books, sets of encyclopedias, children’s books, sets of dictionaries, computer learning books and general reading books)
- 29 computers
- 600 floppy discs
- 2 whiteboards
- 1 projector
- 1 portable T.V and 2 video recorders.
The benefit of this project to the people of Cook Islands is immense. Currently options for adults to enhance their knowledge and learn new skills are extremely limited. Resources are scare and costly to transport to the islands. All educational material has to be shipped either from New Zealand or Australia which makes educational equipment and resources very expensive.
One of the biggest problems faced by the community is lack of proper infrastructure and resources. The implementation of this program with the support of the community leaders will encourage and empower the people in the district.
According to Michael Swinbourn, the Kangan Batman TAFE Work for the Dole supervisor, this project benefits both the participants and the recipients.
“Working and collecting material for this project has made the participants more aware of the plight of people living in underdeveloped countries. Many of the people living on the islands in the Pacific do not have access to things we take for granted, even basics like electricity.”
“The participants have managed to make the community aware of the needs of people living in remote areas in a very short time,” he says.
This donation of equipment and material was intended to help a community church open a community learning centre (within the church) to help the disadvantaged youth and adults in the area.
As the generosity has far exceeded expectations, the new community centre will now be built on a larger scale on its own land rather than within the church. Yvonne Marsters, the learning centre’s coordinator in Rarotonga is amazed by the generosity shown by people in Australia.
“The generosity of everyone who has contributed to this project is amazing, we never expected so much. What this means is that we can confidently open a learning centre with all the equipment we need.”
“This centre will be a non-profit centre where we can give back something valuable to the community. It is a long-term project and I hope that we can reach as many people as possible,” says Yvonne.
The collection of equipment and material to be shipped to Rarotonga has been made possible due to the generosity of many from within Kangan Batman TAFE and from outside through personal donations made by people learning of the project. Learning of the nature of the project, Swire Shipping has generously given a 20 per cent discount for transportation of the container to the island.
