A ray of sunshine for children of Chimbu

Story and pictures by TONY PALME
LIFE can be a beautiful journey for a child growing up. But in Papua New Guinea, there is a growing number of children who are finding themselves on the streets or alone in villages and towns because of things beyond their control – divorce, death, or abuse.
In Chimbu, help comes in the form of the Gembogl Orphans Resource Centre, which opened in 2007 to look after children who have been neglected by their families and society or fallen through the cracks.
The centre also practises a holistic approach to improve the quality of life for every member of the community in Gembogl district as part of general efforts to rebuild the lives of vulnerable and displaced children.
The orphanage has a do-no-harm principle, teaching people and children to respect life and protect life in line with the mantra: Do to others as you want others to do to you.
Many children have seen their parents die of HIV/Aids and because of the stigma associated with HIV/Aids the children are shunned by their communities.
The centre takes those children in and provides them counseling, and those of school-age are sent to school.
Fifty-eight children at the centre have seen their parents die of HIV/Aids while another 112 have had parents die of other causes.
The orphans come from the four local level government wards of Kundiawa Gembogl electorate – Mitnande, Niglkande, Waiye , and Kundiawa Urban – and parts of Sinesine Yongomugl electorate which shares the border with Gembogl.
The centre is based at Gembogl government station, just beside Wara Simbu, within an environment that is beautifully created, fully equipped to lodging standard.
Cenetre director Willie Gene sees stigma and discrimination as huge challenges in efforts to help the underprivileged children and give them hope.
The first thing they do is identify the orphans, draw up their profile, make adoption arrangements, and provide ongoing counselling and support to the orphans and the foster parents if any.
Not only does the centre focus on orphans, it also provides life skills training and poverty elimination programmes and animal husbandry skills training to the communities in general. There are also programmes that help with counselling, positive living, nutrition rehabilitation training and information, paralegal services, and drug rehabilitation for HIV victims, those with tuberculosis and people affected by other diseases.
“We want to ensure everybody receives the same love, care and protection and have equal access to opportunities in life regardless of the various circumstances they are in.
“Everybody is equal in God’s eyes. We want to make sure people who are sick and marginalised members of the community receive love and respect and be accepted as equal.”
The Gembogl Orphans Resource Centre started an Accelerated Christian Education School in 2011 to provide young children quality foundation education.
When the children complete grade 2, they move out to mainstream schools to do the rest of their formal education.  “We have four classrooms, four voluntary teachers and a total of 123 students from observatory to grade 2.”
The school charges reasonable fees where those in the observatory class pay K40, the preparatory pay K60, grade 1 pay K80, and grade 2 pay K100 in a year.
So far over 200 students have graduated and moved on to Mendikwae Primary, Goro Primary, Gembogl Primary, and Mathias Meriba Primary.
Teachers at the centre are paid K200 a month. There are plans to build more classrooms, a conference room and a library.
Gene said that revenue from the school fees and rent of rooms and the conference room for meetings helps pay their way.
Gene is also the district disease control officer for Kundiawa Gembogl, operating out of Gembogl District Hospital and mainly deals with malaria and TB patients.
He uses his own time and resources to do this charity work (helping orphans, running the ACE school, life skills training and others) to improve the livelihood of the community and to empower them to live healthy and wealthy lifestyles in order to meet the government’s Millennium Development Goals.
The centre raises pigs, goats, chickens, and ducks which are sold to help finance programmes. But there is never enough money to do all that should be done and it is therefore unfortunate that some children don’t get to where they need to be.
They have, in the past, received support and funding from Unicef, Catholic Diocese of Kundiawa, late Kundiawa Gembogl MP Joe Mek Teine, former Chimbu governor Father  John Garia and current MP Tobias Kulang.
Through an arrangement that is in place between the centre and the Tombil Community Health Workers (CHW) training school in Jiwaka, some young people have received some nursing training and are now working in health posts around Chimbu.
Gene is concerned that Kundiawa Gembogl tops the statistics chart of people infected with HIV/Aids but the war to bring that under control is hampered by their isolation and the lack of resources like a vehicle to help distribute the drugs from Port Moresby to patients in remote locations.
There are 22 HIV patients at Gembogl District Hospital.
The disease control officer is engineering an annual TB and HIV/Aids programme for schools in Kundiawa Gembogl electorate, which is being funded by the Chimbu Provincial Health Division under the leadership of principal health adviser Margaret Kaile.