One man’s search for answers

PEOPLE

By SERAH LAGDOM
STEVEN Pesto was born on Dec 9, 1968 to Methodist minister, Rev Pesto Matalavu who is now retired and back home at Fai’ava Village on Goodenough Island, Milne Bay.
Steven is the third born in a family of two sisters and a brother.
His primary and secondary education was tough. Going to school was never in one place but followed his parents’ ministry postings starting from Bwaruada to Kurada then Bunama on Normanby Island. After grade six at Bunama Primary School, he was selected for Wesley High School, a United Church boarding institution.
This was the first time in his life that he was physically separated from his family to experience what it meant to be independent. As a teenager it was very depressing, difficult and lonesome while his parents moved on with their calling to Fergusson Island and later to Trobriand Islands.
Attending church-owned schools meant adhering to strict rules and discipline. The four most important rules were to: Atending church service every Sunday; attend morning devotion before classes; attend evening devotion after night studies and have three garden plots for sustenance and to sell surpluses to the school mess.
He had tough times in terms of food and clothing. He was frequently called into the deputy headmaster’s office for outstanding school fees which he struggled to pay with the money from selling food to the school mess. He somehow fended for himself from grades seven to eight and passed the exams to continue to grades nine and 10.
He had to forgo his school holidays to work at the school grounds, his vegetable gardens and looked for any other opportunities to make money for school fees and other basic needs. One such opportunity was to rake grass at the Salamo Airstrip after tractor had slashed it. He also worked in privately owned coconut plantation.
The struggles affected his learning and he did not do well in the year 10 exams.

Search for answers
He worked hard and started a trade store in the village and after three years, saved enough money and in 1989 set sail to look for new opportunities in Port Moresby. He enrolled at the Commercial Training College at Boroko and did short accounting courses. While there, he met Moses Tekwie from Lido village in West Sepik Province who introduced him to Christopher Hershey, a United Nations volunteer who was the executive director of Melanesian Environment Foundation. He was asked to join Christopher as a volunteer and took the opportunity wholeheartedly.
His commitment as a volunteer has earned him a paid position within the organisation’s finance and administration section which he held for six years. Within those years enhanced his skills and capacity through courses relate to finance and administration as well as community development in PNG as well as in Australia, United States, the Caribbean Islands, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and New Zealand.
In 1996, he was offered a job with the National Volunteers Service (NVS) a state organisation under Department of Community Development as programme coordinator and served until 2001, when he was offered a similar position with Community Development Initiative Foundation, a new entity set up in Moro, Southern Highlands by Chevron Niugini Ltd.
In 2009, he was offered a position with the AusAid Democratic Governance Project as a coordinator implementing small projects as well as training and accrediting community development workers. In 2010, he was team leader for a community development service programme with ExxonMobil.
To be his own boss
In June 2016 he resigned to be his own boss.
His work over 27 years has taken him to most of the provinces in PNG and was never satisfied as a professional for he had seen non-governmental organisations rise and fall due to lack of accountability and sustainability; instead they totally dependent on foreign donors.
He always wanted to see Papua New Guineans become self-reliant, utilising their own resources to maximise the real benefit of such resources but struggled to understand how this could be done.
Enjoying privileges as a working class person, a graduate and certified community development practitioner, then witnessing the struggles by his own people, young and old, has continuously brought a sense of emptiness, guilt, resentment which pierced his heart.
He had worked with people all his life and had the heart them get out of the “dependency syndrome” and to be self-reliant using their own resources but did not know how to make that happen, despite the resources available including what he was to later know as “universal banks.”
Despite all the millions allocated from the National Government for development purposes, there is overwhelming evidence to prove that very little has been done to change lives for better in the last 40 years of Independence.

EDTC/HDI/Gull

His search for answers to alleviate the struggles faced daily to improve basic needs, standard and quality of life of those in the communities in this country has haunted him for many years. In his search with his colleagues and friends led him in 2005 to an American mentor Barry Lally who in turn introduced him to a nobleman known to many as Papa Sam.
Meeting Papa Sam (Samuel Tam) for the first time has completely convinced him that he now found someone who has answers to the many questions he had all those year. This was where his journey to the Human Development Institute (HDI) Personal Viability Business Scheme (PVBS) started.
The PVBS training at Moro in 2007 changed his mindset to see the opportunities to prosper utilising the universal banks. Since then he never looked back but continued to prepare, promote, support, organise and spread this unique training. In 2011, he started applying the skills and knowledge to help his community on Goodenough Island by starting three projects; a trade store, PMV service between Port Moresby and Kerema and a cocoa project on his home island.

Financially down but not out
Two lessons learned in those ventures were that he had not prepared using the established HDI/Gull/PVBS business class education system by going through the steps but rushed into business and secondly he did not invest in the development of human resources to turn them into human assets in order to work collectively to successfully reach his goals.
He described his return to Papa Sam and HDI in April 2018 as a wise decision that really lifted his spirit to a higher level, specifically to understand and acquire HDI success formula in preparing him to return to establishing an HDI campus and continue his journey with his people on March 15, 2019.
But his return to Goodenough Island in June this year with a high spirit to put to use his professional entrepreneur degree was dampened by reality when he found out that his island was still recovering from the effects of a cyclone which had hit the island in April and he had to deal with the aftermath immediately which delayed any progress he in mind. He had no option but to help people to re-establish food gardens and houses that were destroyed.
Despite the challenges, he met Betty Yabom, the founder of I am Change Inc., and they started the journey together with the common drive of empowering people with the aim to create opportunities and give hope to make a difference in their lives.

Accomplishment
Meeting up with young, energetic like-minded and passionate individuals led by Yabom has really improved their progress and preparations for the PVBS home school in October with the first training scheduled for next month.
Steven said after attending HDI in Port Moresby and graduating as a qualified coach, his goal is to establish a HDI campus in Milne Bay.
“In order to that, I have to reach out to my people on Goodenough Island, specifically my cocoa farmers as well as struggling entrepreneurs, school leavers and citizens of Milne Bay by conducting awareness and seminars to register as many interested people to attend the HDI home school.
“I aim to put into action the remedial measures to resuscitate my struggling projects to another level. My goal is that we will utilise the PVBS/GULL system from level one up to the highest level which is level seven to help ourselves.
“I unconditionally applaud Papa Sam for his foresight and love for the people of PNG in setting up a unique world class, business class education system to liberate us all from colonisation through the present capitalist system.
“Answers to the many struggles we face today in PNG and the world will only be found in this unique institution. If you think you are nobody, HDI PVBS is here to help you become somebody, your family, community and the country no matter your current status.
“I now invite and look forward to welcoming the HDI and the PVBS family to Milne Bay and to my homeland as a development partner to help my people become viable with viable projects and together we will make our communities and country better,” Steven said.