Kalamanagunan Primary School gets a timely boost

Kalamanagunan Primary School at Kokopo in East New Britain province is the proud recipient of K1100 from Kokopo Micro Finance (KMF) project.

The money is a loan that the school secured through the KMF facility to help it promote its making a living in agriculture project.

This money will be paid to OISCA School for additional seedlings and other agriculture-related projects that the school is promoting as part of its community-based curriculum.

The loan was made possible through a school account that was opened with KMF in April 2007.

The purpose of this move is inline with a board decision that is aimed at making the school self-reliant rather than depending too much on board funding for its school projects.

Kalamanagunan has been involved in numerous development projects like poultry, backyard gardening, brick making, ice block making, roasted peanuts and a few others as part of its making a living program.

The school has been working closely with other education institutions like OISCA, Vunamami Farmers, Kokopo Secondary School and Woolnough Vocational as part of its community based projects to make learning more appropriate to today’s needs.

Kokopo Micro Finance board member Henry Tavul said it was time students were encouraged to adopt “education for Life” principles rather than “education for employment” as this was no longer true today.

A strong advocate of micro enterprise/informal sector training programmes, Mr Tavul believes this is the way to go today if we are to celebrate 32 years of “real independence in PNG”.

“The move that Kalamanagunan has taken is more inline with the Education 10-Year Development Plan and it is good that schools are taking the initiative to develop such programs,” Mr Tavul said.

“This type of loan is the first of its kind by the district micro finance to be given to a school in the district and province.

“I believe this is also a right move in line with capacity-building exercise in the institution that the district and province has been embarking on.

“I encourage other schools to follow suit and make learning more realistic for our children.”

After completion of this loan the school intends to get a bigger loan that they can use to increase production of bricks under rural technology areas of learning Grades 7 and 8.

Headmaster Mark Petelo, in accepting the money on behalf of the school, thanked his board and Kokopo Micro Finance for their support and pledged the school would do its best to pay off the loan to enable them to get bigger amounts in future