Fundraising efforts for care centre affected: Coordinator

UNIVERSITY of Papua New Guinea Madang Students Association fundraising project coordinator Kurere Matanza says the Coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic has made it difficult to secure grants and do fundraisers for operations and logistic costs to transport books to Madang.
“In this third phase of the Manam appeal project, we have received 10 boxes of books from Buk Bilong Pikinini in Port Moresby to be donated to elementary and primary schools in the three Manam care centres,” he said at a fundraising booth in Vision City on Friday.
Matanza said the schools in the care centres lacked education infrastructure facilities, especially libraries and books.
“Children at the care centres deserve quality education and reading must be promoted and encouraged to help develop their minds,” he said.
Matanza said the people at the care centres had lost the first generation of children when they were displaced from their island 16 years ago.
“We are now targeting this next generation to make sure that they have a chance at education to better their lives,” he said.
Matanza said the project started in 2019 and “we raised K8,000 and bought water tanks for each of the three primary schools”.
“The second phase of the project was carried out last year with the installation of water tanks with a K5,000 grant from the Voice Inc,” he said. Matanza said university students were expected to do more donation drives in the province before carrying out the book donations to the schools in the care centres at the end of this month.