Rural school opens, gives hope

LOCALLY-founded Dudua School of Experience in Mondia Bridge village at the foot of PNG’s highest mountain Mt Wilhelm in Gembogl, Chimbu, is giving new hope to the unfortunate – those with no access to formal education training.
Masonry specialist and Technical Vocational Education (TVET) instructor Willie Bongro established the school in his Mondia Bridge village, creating a rare chance for disadvantaged rural people to have a formal skills training at least.
Masonry training utilised locally-available materials such as stone, sand, water and clay to build structures and bricks of various sizes and shapes.
Bongro said students attending the school had no hope of formal employment but after graduating from masonry training, they needed to build civil construction companies.
These days the school is engaged in building houses or give buildings a touch of class with locally-produced masonry material.
“A good number of them (students) were taken to Hela, where they constructed Prime Minister James Marape’s house in Tari-Pori,” he said.
Bongro said one of them secured a permanent job with a Port Moresby-based building company.
“Masonry construction using local materials – wet sand, stone and mud – is my life.
“I am teaching everyone who is coming to my school, giving them new hope in life,” he said.
Bongro said he attended the then-Arawa Technical School before the Bougainville Crisis, studying masonry.
“When I teach others about masonry, I know that I am planting a seed.
“I was offered a teaching position at the established Technical Vocational Education Training (TVET) institution but I decided to pursue with helping the unfortunate ones.
“I spent K6,000 to teach 69 people who remained to graduate from an enrolment of 83 students in the beginning.”
Bongro said masonry skills was in high demand as stone and wet sand were in abundant supply in PNG and trees used for timber could be saved to promote climate change.
A former student’s (Peter Takai) wife testified that her husband was a no-body in the village but after he attended masonry school, he was one of those engaged to work in Hela.
She said on his return, he purchased building materials for their permanent house. She thanked Dudua School of Experience.
Johnny Boi Takai said the school was transforming people.
“It plays a big role in minimising and eliminating social problems in the communities,” he said.
Joe Komba, another former student, said the school helped educate illiterates in a country where 70 per cent of the population could not read or write.
“The efforts of the school must be supported by the Government to help educate and create hopes for the people in rural settings,” he said.
Highlands regional TVET coordinator Paul Gunn highlighted the importance of developing life skills through technical training.
Gunn commended Bongro for his vision.
Vincent Komura, from the Komura Foundation in the hinterlands of Snow Pass at the border of Chimbu and Madang, donated 20 bags of cconcrete to the school.
He said Bundi was just over the mountain where the school was located, at Mondia Bridge.
Students from Snow Pass enrolled there every year.
“Komura Foundation always caters for unfortunates, I will send students to enrol there every year to make them become agents of change in our community,” Komura said.
Assistant secretary of the TVET section of the Department of Education Wilson Garu, who was the special guest at the graduation, informed the school that he was there to do a technical report to get the school registered.
He said the report he compiled would be for the School Registration Compliance Committee (SRCC) to deliberate on and get the school registered.
“I have a big vision for TVET in PNG that is driving me to push for the Dudua Masonry School of Experience to be registered,”he said.
He told the graduating students, guests and a crowd of about 3,000 that as long as he was in the TVET division, he would support the school as it deserved it.
According to Bongro over the past six years he operated, the school graduated more than 800 masonry students who were employed all around PNG today.
He said the school was initially started in Mondai Bridge village but was shifted to Mirane village outside Kundiawa town.
“I later discovered that the shifting of the school was politically motivated so now we reverted to our origin at Mondia Bridge and we are now here to stay,” Bongro said.