Mijts Blog

Just over a year ago, Maria started volunteer work in a local Secondary girls’ school – OLSH. She quickly realized that they were very under-resourced and, in particular, only had a few computers for over 700 students.

Nick discussed this with a staff member at Suncorp – where he had previously worked. After several emails Nick contacted Chris Whiteford, Executive Manager BT Services, Suncorp Brisbane. Chris readily agreed to assist and rallied his staff to participate in a project which resulted in 25 computers for us to distribute to schools in the local area.

These second hand computers are normally sold off by Suncorp to the public. Instead, the staff of the Brisbane Suncorp Business Technology Group raised the money and purchased them as part of their ‘charity’ program. Dell arranged the packaging for shipment and Microsoft donated sufficient MS Office software to run on all of them. Chris has been the key person in coordinating the project, organising Dell and Microsoft contributions.

In March of this year the computers were shipped by Rotary from Brisbane through to Rabaul. There was one little hiccup when the container went to the Solomon Islands (and we received theirs!) but it was all sorted by our Rotary friend, Anne, and finally the computers arrived in July.

We went over to Anne’s place at Rabaul to help unpack the container. Students and a teacher from one of the receiving schools (Maltech) assisted to unpack the container. The boys are boarding students at the school.

We were all excited when we finally found the computer boxes at the back of the container.

We loaded our ute with computers to take to our house in Kokopo and stored the rest of the computers in Anne’s house until we could come back to collect them at the weekend.

Our HouseMary (Stephanie) helped Nick carry the boxes up the stairs at our house – she happily assisted Nick to move the computers into the house and again helped load them when they were ready to take to the schools. (I LOVE how she always carries heavy items on her head. She is only a slight build but carries quite heavy items this way).

The computers were stacked in the hallway at our place and for over a week Nick spent each evening after work checking each computer and loading software onto them.

Because we received more computers than at first anticipated we were able to give them to three schools.

OLSH received 16 and now have a small computer lab of over 20 computers as well as four computers in their Library.

At a special assembly we presented the 16 computers. The staff and students were very excited and grateful and even sang a hymn of thanks for us which was quite moving – they all sing so beautifully!

This is where Maria Volunteers and along with the Principal, Maria spoke at the assembly explaining fully how the donation of computers evolved. The school currently has a young Japanese volunteer working in IT at the school and with the donation of 16 computers to supplement the few they already had, they have set up a small computer lab. This is a huge asset to the school’s curriculum.

This photo/article appeared in the local newspaper outlining the project.

Two of the computers will go to Kerevat Primary school (soon to be delivered – when our holiday finishes). This will be their first computers!
Seven of the computers went to a secondary school in Rabaul – Malaguna Technical School (Maltech). Since the conception of this project, this school has had three of its buildings burnt down losing their Library and all of the computers they had.

We spent a Sunday afternoon at the school, installing the computers and talking to the Principal and a teacher and it was apparent that they have been quite devastated by this loss as there is no replacement of these buildings or resources as might occur in Australia.

Maltech also held a special assembly for the presentation of their computers.

It is difficult to describe just how VERY grateful the staff and students were for the donation. We would dearly love in the future to be able to source more computers for this school. We are also trying to source books from Brisbane schools for their Library.

These two photos show students at Maltech enjoying access to the new computers.