Huon Gulf Students at University of Papua New Guinea began their book drive at Mare Primary School in Morobe province on Monday.
The book drive will cover two schools in the Huon Gulf district’s Wampar LLG stating with Mare primary and later Tsili-tsili primary school.
The program is the initiative of the 2024 Huon Gulf Student’s Association members to give back to their communities by donating resource books to the schools that will assist the students in 2025.
About 75 cartons of books containing both resource and reading materials will be given to each school accordingly. Due to shortage of funds the association couldn’t cover the freight cost to ship other remaining boxes of books donated by the Indian High Commission from Port Moresby to Lae. UPNG law student Tofot Yanka said the association is determined to enrich the primary school students with reading materials and providing them necessary resources to enhance their reading skills.
“It’s somewhat hard to convince a student to spend time reading in such areas where they have so much to do back at home, maybe if we show up they might be inspired,” Tofot said.
Mare primary school head teacher Kingsley Suaka said the school has 403 students with 14 teachers and is looking forward to be a junior-high school next year onward, but it has not enough infrastructure, resource books and reading materials for such change.
“Our government can do so much, but such assistance is all we need,” he said.
Mr Suaka acknowledged the UPNG HGSA for their support to such inland school and wishes to see more of such charity from organisations to support its students.
“Mare primary is one of the rural schools in Morobe and we really appreciate the UPNG students for their donation,” he added.
The Huon Gulf district office is assisting the students with transportation to and from the book drive.
The Tsili-tsili book drive will start on December 3, the day before their graduation to allow the university students to share their motivation stories to the primary school students.
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