Military exercise aims to deliver school supplies

Twenty US Marines and sailors from Camp Pendleton, California in the United States, are taking part in this year’s Exercise Koa Moana 19 in Lae.
The exercise is focused on delivering school supplies and painting project at the Salvation Army Second-Chance School while reinforcing a wall and re-constructing a porch at the Jim Jacobsen Women’s Shelter.
The marines and sailors started work yesterday on a building at the school where they cleaned and painted the interior of the building and moved on to Jim Jacobsen’s Women’s Centre.
Combat Engineer 7th ESB Sergeant Hermilo Herrera said they were at the school to interact with the children.
They were accompanied by eight members of the Australian Defence Force.
“At Salvation Army, we will just clean up and paint the interior of the building and then we will move on to Jim Jacobsen’s Women’s Centre,” Herrera said.
Gunnery Sgt Charles E McKelvey, of the I Marine Expeditionary Force, said this was their last exercise under the Exercise Koa Moana 19 after some other training like jungle warfare with the PNG Defence Force.
He said they learnt a lot from PNGDF while involved in the training like roasting bananas on fire to eat with dry coconut.
McKelvey said they had marines in Palau and now in PNG for bilateral training and in PNG, they learnt a lot of new skills.
US Navy chaplain Chris Sutton, who was their leader in the renovation of the building in Lae, said the renovations were part of their community relations project and to build better friendship with countries they were operating in.
“There are beautiful people here in this beautiful country, PNG.
“We are not sure if we are going to continue the exercise next year but we hope so,” Sutton said. “We will go back and tell everyone about how amazing PNG is as most of us here had not visited PNG before.”