A message to Little Hearts Learning from Dr Gen.
On behalf of KTF and the communities we work with in Papua New Guinea, I want to thank Eliza and all of the incredible Little Hearts Learning team and supporters for the extraordinary difference YOU have made during our partnership. Over the past 12 months, your generosity and commitment to helping us improve the lives and futures of the wonderful communities in which we serve has been inspiring.
Over this time, your generosity has funded a range of projects from school and health infrastructure, to life-changing solar, to keeping women and girls safe, and supporting pathways for students into teaching.
Little Hearts Gorari is now open, alleviating an incredibly crowded existing elementary school and paving the way for the introduction of early childhood education into the community. Through your support of our two dedicated teachers at the school, you are ensuring that all school-aged children in that community are accessing a quality education in a beautiful learning environment.
Students at Little Hearts Gorari excited about their new classroom
Little Seedlings Kou Kou is next and over the past 4 months, the building has been pre-fabricated and is about to jump onto the water, scheduled to arrive in Oro Province within the week; and will be constructed before Christmas. This new classroom will provide a permanent home for the preschool that we have been running for the past 5 years in a community hall and will allow more children from surrounding communities to start their lifelong learning journey at a developmentally-critical early age.
Little Seedlings Kou Kou is being shipped to Oro Bay, for transportation and installation
Little Hatchlings Buna & Healing Hearts Aid Post Sanananda are currently in pre-fabrication and are 40% complete. They will be shipped to Oro Province towards the end of this year and constructed by our builders in early 2022, with the Buna classroom ready to greet 80 Prep students for the new school year; and to also introduce ECE for the first time into that community – allowing the 4 and 5 year olds to start their schooling journey.
The Sanananda Aid Post will also be built in early 2022 and will provide a permanent facility for the surrounding community of 1000+ people to access primary healthcare, a basic human right. The dedicated birthing suite will be a first for the region’s mums, encouraging safe, assisted births! Our community health worker in Sanananda is brimming with excitement: to move from his current bush material aid post, into a beautiful new facility, that encourages healing and care.
The Gorari community celebrates the arrival of solar units, now installed on their homes
Having access to light and power after dark is truly life changing. The community of Gorari has now had household solar lighting and energy systems installed onto every single home – all 80 of them housing around 400 people! They are now able to study, learn and live (safely) after dark thanks to your generous support. You have also recently provided us with the funds to do the same in the remote coastal community of Baga in Tufi, lighting up and energising a further 99 households. These systems are on the barge, making their way over to the Tufi region; from there they will be transferred into smaller banana boats and paddled up the fjords to the village of Baga where they will be installed by our technicians next month, bringing light and energy to the Baga community for the first time ever.
Students and Teachers, Wari & Cornelius Pondo
In addition to this amazing array of permanent infrastructure, you have supported 14 students (some of whom are teachers) through their studies, helped the operation of the province’s very first safe house for women and children fleeing domestic violence, provided housing support, water access, school resource packs for students and even female hygiene packs for women in remote communities.
Development work is challenging work at the best of times. Throw in a global pandemic, and the past 18 months have been some of the most demanding and difficult days since we began our organisation in 2003. Having the support of LHL during this time has been absolutely critical to enabling us to continue our work in education and health across the remote and rural Oro province. Development activities take time. Our amazingly resilient and hard-working team overcomes a wide array of daily challenges to make things happen. The logistics behind infrastructure and the building of classrooms and aid posts is highly complex, time-consuming and must battle the elements: These include the storms, the flooding and immense challenges of the changing climate; the COVID-19 pandemic, the health crisis that continues to ravage remote villages in PNG, and the impacts of state-enforced lockdowns; and the complexities of doing community development alongside transparent and trustworthy partners, respectfully engaging with communities and their representatives, and delivering high-impact projects that actually change lives and futures – it’s all tough but important work.
We are grateful to every supporter of Little Hearts Learning who has been on the journey with us these past 12 months. We are looking forward to keeping you updated as the remaining projects come to fruition over the coming weeks and months, and we hope you are proud of the change you have collectively made for the people of PNG.
For you, we say tenkyu tumas.
Warmest,
Dr Gen.