Graduates achieve milestone

Lae School of Nursing graduates were told on Thursday that they had achieved a significant milestone in their education through hard-work and sacrifice.
Scholarship programme manager from the Australian High Commission’s leadership and education team Lyn Bae acknowledged a group of 17 graduates who had studied with the support of Australia Awards at the school.
Bae acknowledged the support of private sector partners Steamships and Newcrest in funding seven of the Australian Awards scholarship awardees.
She said the PNG-Australia partnership was proud to partner with the private sector and the positive results they continued to yield.
“Australia Award scholarship supports Papua New Guineans to develop knowledge and work place skills in priority areas as agreed by the Government of PNG in teaching, midwifery and of course, nursing,” she said.
Bae said since 2012, the PNG-Australia partnership had offered more than 120 Australia Awards to study at the Lae School of Nursing with over half of those scholarships going to women and this was part of 2,000 such scholarships across PNG.
“Australia’s scholarship programmes in PNG are long-term and for sustained investment in Papua New Guineans,” she said.
“This partnership is proud of this tangible investment in skills and service delivery and to be responding directly to PNGs development priorities.”
Bae said Australia High Commission were proud of a transformative impact of the nursing scholarship.
She said since 2012, more than 600 new nurses had trained through Australia Awards with an investment of over K18 million with the graduates making a direct contribution to healthier communities right across PNG and often in rural or remote areas.
“We are very pleased that this investment is continuing on with selections of nursing scholars starting in 2021, currently underway.
“The PNG-Australia partnership is investing in a broader capacity development of Lae School of Nursing and our other partner tertiary institutions.
“Since 2017, we’ve provided K3.2 million capacity building to four partner PNG tertiary institutions.
“Here at Lae School of Nursing, this includes new medical equipment for training students, new textbooks, upgraded students dormitories and security fencing, an e-library and recently, new infrastructure to ensure the school has reliable storage and access across all buildings,” Bae said.
She said the investments mentioned were benefiting all students and not the awardees and staff, contributing to teaching capacity and academic success.
This complements the many other ways PNG and Australia were working together to drive Morobe’s growth and development, including major partnership from the Angau General Hospital re-development.