Technical education with an advantage

Editorial

A SCHOOL in Lae is creating opportunities for youths who want to be highway drivers.
The owner and principal of the Safety of Speed Highway Driver Training School Tope Yoko says he saw a need for drivers, properly trained ones at that, from his
experience on working at a mine site.
Technical training is a boon for many in the community who need practical skills in order to find gainful employment.
The advantage of such training is that it is cheaper than getting a tertiary education at a university or college and the time frames are much shorter meaning the individual can be inserted into the workforce and start earning a living after fraction of the time it takes to earn a degree.
Granted the payoff for pursuing a tertiary education is usually a better paying job and more options in life and career-wise, the reality in Papua New Guinea is there are more people of working age (18-55 years) who are unemployed then there are in formal employment.
Sometimes even university educated individuals are unable to find work because there just aren’t enough jobs on the market.
Technical training however across a broad range of semi-skilled to basic skilled jobs gives those who do not progress to universities and colleges some kind of start in life and a basis for building a career in a field they have an aptitude in.
Yoko said the inspiration to set up his driving school was a practical one and he pointed out one of the biggest shortcomings of these institutions.
“There are many training schools but what I found out was that most of the time is spent on theory and only a day on practical lessons,” Yoko said.
But of the training institutions around the country perhaps one that has earned a reputation as a producer of not just skilled workers but upright and community conscious young men is the Don Bosco school and training institutions in the country.
The name is synonymous with hard work in a trade and Christian values.
Founded in Papua New Guinea in the early 1980s in Port Moresby and Gulf province the Catholic order has dedicated itself to furthering the fortunes of underprivileged young men from the communities and teaching them a trade as well as instilling a good work ethic.
St John Bosco or simply Don Bosco as he is known worldwide was an Italian Catholic priest who founded the Salesian order.
Specialising in the education and mentoring of youths the order operates schools with a technical focus in countries on every continent.
Most of these institutions are located in poorer areas of cities or in the rural communities where the padres, brethren and novitiates create an atmosphere of acceptance and love coupled with a strong work ethic to breed “Bosconians”.
Salesians operate five technical and secondary schools and a college (DBTI) in Papua New Guinea with the first school opened in 1982 in Gabutu, Port Moresby, near the notorious suburb of Kaugere.
The others are in Gulf (Araimiri), Chimbu (Kumgi), Sandaun (Vanimo) and East New Britain (VunaBosco).
The school has a well-earned reputation not only as a technical and vocational educational
institution of high standards but one which instils discipline and structure into the lives of its
pupils.
But if you ask any student who has passed out of the Don Bosco the first thing they will tell you is that it gave them a second chance.
The majority of DB’s intakes are drop-outs, rejected school leavers and students from low income families.
Students who needed someone to believe in them and to be give them a break.
Don Bosco has done immeasurable good for the city and country providing an avenue for many boys to learn a trade and gain employment (Don Bosco graduates from the secondary and vocational courses find employment relatively easily because of the school’s record of producing reliable and honest workers).
But perhaps the biggest difference the institution has made is moulding them into what Papua New Guinea needs more of respectful, decent and hardworking young men.