Tembari to build school targeting early learning in children

Story by ALFREDO P HERNANDEZ
THE Tembari Children’s Care has progressed during the past two years and is now looking forward to building its first school for young learners and elementary schoolchildren.
“We are looking forward to start a K100,000 school building in the middle of this year,” Penny Sage-embo, founder of Tembari disclosed to The National on Saturday, the ninth anniversary of the day-care facility located in Oro Settlement, at 7-Mile outside Port Moresby.
“At the same time, we are hoping to soon acquire a title to the 3,500 square metre property that Tembari is occupying,” Sage-embo said.
She said Lands secretary John Ofoi had assured the day-care facility would be allocated the property towards its educational programme for the settlement children.
Sage-embo said aside from operating a pre-school that benefited 40 Tembari children and another 60 from the settlement, “Tembari is going to progress into an elementary school programme, initially with each class in Grade 1 and Grade 2”.
“They will hold classes at the four-classroom building that we are going to build by July,” she said.
Right now, the Tembari preschoolers are holding classes in two community learning centres (CLCs) donated by the Digicel Foundation in 2009.
Sage-embo said this school year, Tembari would be looking after 200 children, providing them meals twice a day, from Monday to Friday and one meal on Saturday.
Of the 200 children, 58 are in primary schools in Port Moresby, with 30 of them at Wardstrip, in Gordon. The rest are in other schools in the city.
Likewise, the facility has 67 elementary schoolchildren, with 58 of them at Wardstrip.
It is providing early childhood education, or preschool, to 40 children.
Aside from this, Tembari is taking care of 25 non-school-aged children, who like the rest, are neglected, abandoned and orphaned children.
In a brief remark before guests that included corporate executives and community leaders who attended last Saturday’s open house activities, Sage-embo thanked Tembari’s corporate sponsors and supporters of its daily feeding programme.
The sponsors are RD Foundation, SVS Mart, High Energy Co, The Water Company, Pacific Industries Ltd, Malaysian Association in PNG (MAPNG), Filipino Association in PNG (FAPNG), RH Foundation, High Energy Co, Homeguard Construction Ltd, RBP Trading, Hugo Canning, YES Ltd and a number of individual donors who did not wish to be named.
Sage-embo thanked the sponsors of the school building project that included the Australian High Commission, Hardware Haus, AzkoNobel, Malaysian Association of PNG, Filipino Association of PNG, AP Engineering of East New Britain, Eda Ranu, the Lands Department, PNG Concrete and Aggregates, PNG Stones Ltd, RH Group (PNG), Paradise Interiors, Curtain Bros and Associated Builders & Contractors (ABC).