Amelia Earhart jigsaw continues 70 years on

The year 2007 marks the 70th anniversary of one of the greatest unsolved aviation mysteries of all time.

The mystery – that of American aviatrix Amelia Earhart – intimately involves Papua New Guinea as Lae was her last port of call before she disappeared somewhere over the vast Pacific Ocean.

Amelia Earhart, darling of American aviation, went missing in July 1937, after leaving Lae for the longest stretch of her around-the-world flight.

The mystery and a long fruitless search –costing many millions of US dollars - had begun.

Today, 70 years after her final takeoff – from Lae in Papua New Guinea’s Morobe Province – the mystery is still to be solved.

World attention was focused on Lae in 1937, and continues to this day, when it was the last port of called for Earhart before she disappeared.

Old Lae residents used to recall entertaining the couple in the Hotel Cecil the night before their departure, and then seeing them off the next morning.

Their plane was so overloaded with its eight tonnes of fuel that it was still barely clearing the waves as it disappeared from sight, flying east along the Huon Gulf coast on its way to Howland Island, 4600 kilometres to the north.

On such occasions Lae-ites, regardless of class or social position, felt they were part of history.

Today, a plaque to her memory stands at the Amelia Earhart Park, opposite the famous old Lae airport.

Up the hill from the park, at the Melanesian Hotel, the bar is named Amelia’s after this great woman.

For the last 69 years, hundreds of rumours and theories – some practical but most the products of overfertile imaginations – have kept the memories of Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, alive for millions of Americans.

One of the popular crank theories is that Earhart and Noonan were on a spy flight for the US government and were captured by the Japanese and executed, something that has been vehemently disclaimed by the Japanese to this day.

Some have searched the sea, believing the plane ran out of fuel.

Others think she survived a crash landing but died on a deserted island.

The conspiracy-minded claim Earhart survived and lived out her life under an assumed name as a New Jersey housewife.

There are even bizarre, out-of-this-world urban legends that she was captured by aliens on a UFO.

To US aviation buffs, she is still ‘Amelia’ and they talk about her as though she only went missing yesterday.

The 39-year-old pilot took off from Oakland, California, on June 1, 1937, on what was reported to be her last record flight.

Slim, almost boyish, reminding one of Katherine Hepburn, Amelia Earhart had been setting records for 10 years.

In 1932, she had set a solo record for her Atlantic crossing and earned the nickname of ‘Lady Lindy’, because her slim build and facial features resembled that of Charles Lindbergh.

A year later, she married New York publishing magnate, George Palmer Putnam.

A university graduate, Earhart spoke five languages.

When not flying, she spent most of her time on welfare work in the Boston slums.

Never satisfied with her records, she was always planning something greater.

This was to be IT – the ultimate in long distance flying!

She wanted to be the first woman to fly around the world!

Navigator Fred Noonan, senior navigator of Pan American World Airlines, was considered as good as any in the United States.

He had already crossed the Pacific 18 times, directing the flight of the company’s famed China Clipper.

Their aircraft, a twin-engined Lockheed Electra, fast and sophisticated for its day, was well suited to the task.

They had reached Darwin, Northern Australia, 40 days after leaving Oakland.

Possibly to save weight for the long over-water legs to come, they had then unloaded their parachutes.

From Darwin, it was a short trip over to Lae.

New Guinea was the departing point for the most grueling leg of the flight – near 4600 kilometres over water to Howland Island, the longest ocean crossing ever attempted.

Their destination was a speck of sand and coral in the mid-Pacific 2.5 kilometres long and just under a kilometer wide.

The Lockheed was to be the first aircraft to land on its newly-constructed airstrip.

“Even with a first class navigator on board, it would be an incredible feat to find the island by celestial navigation and dead reckoning alone,” wrote Australian aviator and Earhart researcher Terry Gwynn-Jones in 1977.

“With an error of only one degree in reading, they would miss the island by 72 kilometres.

“Thus it was that the US government stationed the fleet tug Ontario half way along the route and the Coast Guard cutter Itasca at Howland.

“Besides voice communication radios, the Itasca had a radio direction finder and a radio beacon that could be picked up by the aircraft’s Bendix radio compass.

“Once the Lockheed got to within a few hundred kilometers of the island, the Itasca could guide them in.

“Or so it seemed!”

Earhart maintained radio contact with New Guinea, and then later the Itasca and Ontario, until this was lost.

Her last words were: “We are in a line of position 157-337. Will repeat this message on 6210. We are running north and south. We have only a half hour’s fuel and cannot see land.”

The message blasted through loud and clear over the radio of the United States Coast Guard ship Itasca.

The woman’s voice betrayed anxiety.

Quickly, the operator switched to the 6210 kilocycle band and waited for her call.

It never came.

Her silence was shrouded by the crackling of static interference out over the vast Pacific Ocean.

Amelia Earhart, darling of American aviation, was missing.

The times they are a-changin’

Bob Dylan’s 1963 classic The Times They Are A-Changin’ well applies to what is happening to Papua New Guinea’s Information and Communications Technology (ICT) landscape.

Back in 2005, when mobile phones were still in their infancy, I spoke to Pacific Mobile Communications’ managing director Noel Mobiha about the use of mobile phones and the Internet.

How times have changed since then with the arrival of new kid on the block Digicel, however, we lag behind in Internet with the outdated and exorbitant Tiare Gateway.

“…you better start swimmin'
Or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'.”

Below are excerpts from the article that I wrote in July 2005 for the 30th anniversary of our Independence:

Many technical innovations have hit Papua New Guinea since Independence 30 years ago.

Record players were replaced by cassette players, which were in turn displaced by CD players.

Radio, once the most-powerful form of communication in pre-Independence and immediate post-Independence Papua New Guinea, was literally killed by video and then television.

How true were the words of that famous 1970s pop song ‘Video killed the radio star’!

The cinema (haus piksa) – once popular all over the country – has become as extinct as a dinosaur.

However, the Internet and digital mobile phones are probably two of the biggest technical innovations that have hit Papua New Guinea since September 16, 1975.

Pacific Mobile Communications (PMC) – 100 per cent owned by Telikom – is the only licensed provider of Internet and digital mobile phone services in the country.

Its two sections are mobile phones and Internet gateway

Internet hit Papua New Guinea big time in the late 1990s while digital mobile phones became a hit in 2003 and wiped out its predecessor, the more-expensive analogue mobile phones.

The number of digital mobile phones has, since 2003, eclipsed standard telephone line users.

PMC buys its Internet telecommunications capacity from Telikom and in turn makes it available to users.

“We connect to the Internet outside PNG and distribute the capacity to the four ISPs (Internet Service Providers) which are Datec, Daltron, DataNets and Global Internet,” explains PMC managing director Noel Mobiha.

“They are our partners in the Internet business.

“They sell the service through dial-up or lease line, on our behalf.

“The Internet growth in the country is limited by the available bandwidth from Telikom.

“However, this picture is going to change in September when more capacitators are provided by Telikom.

“We expect to double the current capacity we have in September.”

Mr Mobiha agrees that Internet growth is limited in Papua New Guinea to mainly those in the urban areas and with a good education.

“The growth (in Internet usage) is linear,” he says.

“The factors that are limiting growth are firstly bandwidth cost is too high, secondly because of costs and affordability of computers, and thirdly because of low literacy levels.

“These are the key factors hindering the growth of Internet in this country.”

To help alleviate these, PMC – as a community service obligation (CSO) - is investing in the universities to build a Papua New Guinea education research network (ERNet).

“That we hope will give us a subscriber base that is more information literate – an information society - for the future of the country,” Mr Mobiha continues.

“Because we believe that if we don’t invest in education and research, our future is dim.

“We are giving a grant of K250, 000 per year to assist develop this network, which will tie all the universities together.

“They will be bound under the agreement to provide support services to national high schools and lower education.

“In other words, they will serve as hosts and schools can dial in under them.

“That’s what we’re doing as a community service obligation (CSO) project.”

PMC launched its GSM900 service in May 2003, under the trade name Bee Mobile.

The digital GSM brought Papua New Guinea on par with the majority of countries in the Pacific region and the rest of the world, who have digital mobile networks.

Before that, few Papua New Guineans had the expensive analogue mobile phones, and the thinking among expatriate consultants was that digital mobile phone usage wouldn’t go pass the 20,000 mark.

How wrong they were, as Papua New Guineans took to the new ‘toys’ with glee, and the number of users is now near the 70,000 mark.

“Initially, there were 3000 subscribers,” Mr Mobiha says.

“The network was designed for a ceiling of 20,000 users: 12,000 in Port Moresby, 4000 in Lae, and the balance around Madang, Goroka and Mount Hagen

“Mobile phone growth was then very slow.

“Consultants thought that usage wouldn’t grow, and that the 20,000 ceiling would be reached by December 2005.

“The 20,000 ceiling was reached in December 2003 – two years ahead of what consultants predicted.

“The network has grown to more than three times what it was designed for, with currently 60,000 to 70,000 subscribers.

“We didn’t do anything to cater for this.”

“We have now reached a stage where we are logging 2700 new customers per month.

“That’s going to change to more people once the network expands.

“It’s going to grow, this (mobile phone) technology.

“What we see now is ‘going forward’.”

•For feedback and comments, email malumnalu@yahoo.com or SMS 6849763/72580278.

The Hunt for Amelia Earhart

I was pleasantly surprised to receive an email recently from Douglas Westfall, a book publisher in Southern California, USA, regarding a new book about the hunt for famed American aviatrix Amelia Earhart.

Apparently, Westfall caught my January 2007 piece on the Earhart saga in The National, and saved it until he got in touch with me and sent me an electronic version of the new book (e-book).

The year 2007 also marks the 70th anniversary of one of the greatest unsolved aviation mysteries of all time.

The mystery – that of the disappearance of Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan – intimately involves Papua New Guinea as Lae was her last port of call before she disappeared somewhere over the vast Pacific Ocean.

Amelia Earhart, darling of American aviation, went missing in July 1937, after leaving Lae for the longest stretch of her around-the-world flight.

The mystery and a long fruitless search – costing many millions of US dollars - had begun.

Today, 70 years after her final takeoff from Lae, the mystery is still to be solved.

Old Lae residents used to recall entertaining the couple in the Hotel Cecil the night before their departure, and then seeing them off the next morning.

Their Lockheed Electra was so overloaded with its eight tonnes of fuel that it was still barely clearing the waves as it disappeared from sight, flying east along the Huon Gulf coast on its way to Howland Island, 4600km to the north.

Today, a plaque to her memory stands at the Amelia Earhart Park, opposite the famous old Lae airport.

Up the hill from the park, at the Melanesian Hotel, the bar is named Amelia’s after this great woman.

The just-released new book co-authored by Westfall and the late Richard K Mater, The Hunt for Amelia Earhart, tells the story of the 16 days following Earhart’s disappearance.

The US Coast Guard with the US Navy and nine ships, 66 aircraft, and some 3,000 men searched over a quarter of a million miles for the Electra and survivors.

The book contains seven first person accounts.

It has a man from most of the ships including a Navy man on the deck of the USS Lexington aircraft carrier (still alive) and an airman (also still alive) from the USS Colorado.

They all give such great detail within their account of the search.

The book has 260 illustrations including 160 photographs over - 100 unpublished - plus the diary of Associated Press reporter onboard ship James Carey.

The book has four hooks.

1) It's a first person account piece, with unpublished diaries, interviews, and memoirs.

There are seven first person accounts in the book, from the young men who were on the Earhart Search, three of whom are alive and the rest have family who can be contacted for interview purposes.

One of these young men was James Carey.

He was a student at the University of Hawaii, who was working at the Honolulu Star-Bulletin and was a representative for the Associated Press.

His complete diary, photographs, and letters are included within the book including: a letter to Carey from AP’s Clark Lee, and a letter to Fred Noonan from AP’s Russell Brines.

Other than some web access, none of these materials have been published before.

2) It's a hero piece, what the boys did for Amelia.

“And I have seven of the boys; it's a real flag waver,” Westfall boasts.

Nine ships, 66 aircraft, and 3,000 US Navy and US Coast Guard men searched 260,000 square miles of open sea plus 24 islands within a 600 mile range of Earhart's target: Howland Island.

The book contains the accounts of sailors and flyers who in their early 20s were risking their lives on the Earhart Search.

“Two of these boys are still alive and can be contacted,” Westfall says.

3) It's a new theory piece, different than the two primary theories.

The splash-and-sank theory of Nauticos who have spent some US$3 million on three ventures to search for Earhart's plane at the bottom of the Pacific at 18,000 feet.

The book has the Lockheed man who built the aircraft, who is still alive, and can be contacted in Southern California.

The crash-landing theory of TIGHAR who have spent somewhat less on five trips to search for Earhart on Nikumaroro (Gardner) Island.

The book has the Navy flyer who flew over Gardner on the Earhart Search, who is still alive, and can be contacted in Utah.

4) It's a history piece, the story never told, with unpublished photos, charts, and maps.

A surprise ending where the Japanese officially tell Washington DC that they are out looking for Earhart, but never report back.

Two days after they would have picked her out of the sea, they attacked Beijing, China, on July 7, 1937, the start of the Pacific War.

Four-and-a-half years later on December 8, 1941, one day after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, they bombed Howland Island - some 1900 miles southwest of Hawaii.

There were only a few shacks, four boys, and a three-tube radio on the essentially deserted island at the time.

The Japanese had investigated the island, six months before Earhart was to arrive.

The Hunt for Amelia Earhart. By Douglas Westfall and Richard K Mater. The Paragon Agency Publishers, 2007. 262 pages. ISBN 1-891030-24-8. Email: Paragona@Pacbell.net . Website: http://www.specialbooks.com/.

ICT in Papua New Guinea: Blind leading the blind

The Government still seems to have no clear directions for its Information and Communications Technology (ICT) policy, if this week’s National Budget is any yardstick to go by.

This is despite the Government allocating K20 million specifically towards the ICT policy in the 2008 National Budget.

There is no clear indication yet if the ICT monopoly held by Telikom – particularly in its outdated Tiare Internet Gateway - will be broken.

As an aside, a couple of weeks ago, I sailed to Salamaua on the MV Rita and almost everyone on the boat was using mobile phones at sea to call their loved ones in Lae or around the country.

Competition is good, anyone will tell you, except a handful of narrow-minded Government Ministers and politicians.

And ironically, National Planning and Monitoring Secretary Simon Tosali, at the National Budget lock-up which I attended on Tuesday this week, indicated that mobile phone competition had made a huge contribution to the growth of the Papua New Guinea economy this year and would continue to do so next year.

Digicel’s entry into the local mobile phone industry to compete with Telikom and its subsidiary B-Mobile has sparked a 0.7 per cent boost to the growth of Gross Domestic Product this year.

During the last six months, Digicel has invested about K450 million in the country and generated 300 regular jobs with about 4,000 indirect jobs around the country.

It also generated substantial revenue from its sale of mobile handsets and call credits that went into the local economy.

I have said before, and will say it again, that the ICT monopoly in Papua New Guinea, exorbitant telephone and Internet costs, as well as lack of knowledge about ICT all contribute to the massive digital divide in the country.

Papua New Guinea will continue to remain light years behind the rest of the world if we do not jump on the ICT bandwagon in this globalised world.

The digital divide within the country is an enormous barrier to the ability of the people to participate in and benefit from the digital economy.

Access to Internet, adequate infrastructure, human capacity building and appropriate policies on ICT are central issues in addressing the digital divide.

Success in this globalised world is predicated on ICT knowledge and successful knowledge-based economies will be based on the efficient and widespread use of ICT by all sectors within any given country.

It’s a classic case of “the blind (Government) leading the blind (people of Papua New Guinea)”.

And in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king!

Our leaders in Government should know that the greatest problem the country faces in the area of ICT is the Telikom monopoly through the Tiare Gateway.

A former Papua New Guinea resident now residing in New Zealand highlighted this very point in an email to me this week.

“I was interested to read your views in the online edition of The National,” he said.

“After 17 years in PNG, the online papers are one way to remain in touch with what’s happening there.

“Although you make some good points in that article, there was no mention of the greatest problem PNG faces in this area: the Telikom monopoly through Tiare.

“It’s all very well to have a limited broadband locally but the true benefits are achieved with an international network.

“The tiny ‘pipeline’ linking PNG with the rest of the world means outside communications are too slow and their charging policies restrict most people from utilising them.

“Whilst I am able to implement a VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) solution in my home and talk to friends in UK for free, I can’t use it to reach friends in PNG (unless they work for The World Bank).

“A caring government would axe the monopoly, allow the ISPs (Internet Service Providers) to actually compete and enable the people to use the technology.

“Telikom is a government ‘cash cow’ and that’s the reason they don’t want to open everything up.

“They’re billing Internet connections as a toll call whereas, elsewhere in the world, it’s a local call.

“Many people over here (New Zealand) never turn it (Internet) off!”

Telikom – through the Tiare Gateway - is the only licensed provider of Internet services in the country.

The four Internet Service Providers (ISPs) - Datec, Daltron, DataNets and Global Internet – buy their Internet telecommunications capacity from Telikom on wholesale.

The ISPs in turn sell the service through dial-up or lease line at hugely-inflated prices.

The Internet growth in the country is limited by the available bandwidth from Telikom.

University of Technology electrical electronics and telecommunications lecturer Elias Mandawali says people within Telikom are not doing enough research into new technologies in telecommunication systems.

“There is a lot of confusion in the World Wide Web (WWW) applications of Broadband Internet and the telephony Broadband Internet offered by the Public Switch Telephone Network ( PSTN ),” he said.

“The Tiare runs on the old 4 kHz frequency and bit rate at 64kbps, which is too narrow for Broadband, and one will find that the information can be lost or congested.

“We have to educate Papua New Guineas to use the latest WiFi-function telecommunication networks on the World Wide Web.

“This will enable triplay bandwidth … and is the answer to PNG’s ICT policy.”

•For feedback and comments, email malumnalu@yahoo.com or SMS 6849763/72580278.

You know you're a Papua New Guinean when:

*You can have cordial 4 breakfast.

* You have Buai for Lunch.

* You still live with your parents even though you're 30.

*U bring your boyfriend/girlfriend to the house and everyone's concluded that you are married!

* You wear board shorts to cruz in town even though u r not going 4 a swim (KBS 2 the max!).

* You share one cigarette with five other people.

* Your Mother gives your father Black eyes.

* You have about 3 families living in one house.

* Still keep drinking even though you can barely talk and walk.

* At any major function, instead of a plate, your food comes in a plastic container.

* You run into a mountain of Slippers blocking the front door.

* Your staple diet is rice and tin fish or Ox & palm.

* You have a huge gap between your first two toes, (excessive thong wear...).

* Swimming pool is filled with people wearing t-shirts, (Females).

* You can sprint barefoot on sharp stones and rocks.

* You wake up and go straight to work or classes.

* At crossings, u r supposed 2 wait 4 the car to stop b4 crossing, not the other way around.

* Your first and last names are the same. (John John).

* You have a perpetually drunk Uncle who starts fights at every family gathering.

* You call a friend - (squad).

* Every time you greet someone he says "YOU"?.

* You have sat in a 4-seater car with up to 8 other people.

* You can speak with your face - eg. Twitch like a rabbit to ask, Where you going?"

* Your Grandmother thinks Vicks Vapor-Rub is the miracle cure for everything> (including broken bones ....).

* You're getting a hiding and your parents yell at you as to ,"Why you are crying for?" ("you karai lo wanem ah ......").

* You've been shamed and belted up by your Mother in front of schoolmates at the Supermarket.

* You're a Tycoon on your payday by shouting everyone and scab money off people till the next fortnight.

* You invite people over for dinner and your family all of a sudden says the grace.

* You've had an afro at some stage in your life (boys AND girls) and thought you looked cool.

* You're at your Aunties and see your 6 year old cousin doing household chores.

* Your Aunty visits and she's talking to you at the same time as looking in your pots for food...

* You go to your village rich and come back poor.

* You have lap laps for curtains in your house.

Now, stop laughing and send it over to other Papua New Guineans!

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

Youngsters become young stars at Kokopo Secondary School

Kokopo Secondary School in East New Britain province is undergoing a quite revolution as its students become real-life entrepreneurs.

To see the determination of these youngsters to be young stars, especially at a time when so many of their peers all over the country are sinking into a quagmire of poverty and unemployment, gives you so much optimism for the future.

Kokopo Secondary School is indeed a parable for the youth of Papua New Guinea.

These young men and women – Grade 9, 10, 11 and 12 students - are into various businesses such as vegetable growing, tailoring, trade stores, poultry, cooking food, laplaps, meri blouses, coconut oil, baking, and many more.

They are trained by their teachers in all facets of small business such as producing, buying, marketing, selling, bookkeeping and banking.

They are independent and no longer rely on their parents for school fees and pocket money.

Young female Grade 10 student Catherine Kereku – in something out of the ordinary - designs, builds and then sells coffins in her own workshop.

Justin Malana, another female Grade 10 student, is the sole breadwinner for her siblings after their father deserted them and the subsequent death of their mother.

Male Grade 10 student Angelo Buak – who is into selling iceblocks, baking and sewing – recently used some of this money to buy his own personal computer.

Female Grade 10 student Coran Dan, whose vegetable garden is a walk-in market for customers, has made over K3000 this year.

These are just a few of the many success stories from Kokopo Secondary School.

The enthusiasm of these young people for business and life in general greatly touched and moved a group of visitors to the school last week.

The Start and Improve Your Business (SIYB) programme is offered as an integral part of the school curriculum at Kokopo Secondary School to create awareness of and promote entrepreneurship to students, their parents and the community at large.

The SIYB programme, run by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) through the Small Business Development Corporation (SBDC), was first introduced to Kokopo Secondary School in 2003 by SBDC-accredited master trainer Henry Tavul.

“He (Tavul) successfully trialed and pioneered the program with a class of about 100 business studies students who graduated with a certificate,” said Kokopo principal Patrick Jerome.

“The success immediately had a positive impact in the school, which resulted in having SBDC training 24 teachers to be trainers in 2004.

“Since then the program has taken root in the school and has grown bigger and better.

“It is our strong desire to pro-actively participate in the government’s nationwide programs in the drive to alleviate poverty in PNG by teaching young people to learn and adopt business culture at a young age.”

Tavul recalls that the SIYB programme was treated with suspicion by both students and parents when he introduced it at the school in 2003.

“They (students and parents) were not very enthusiastic,” he remembers.

“They were looking forward to white collar jobs.

“Now, they can see that they have something to fall back on if they don’t get a white collar job.”

The history of the SIYB programme at Kokopo Secondary School goes back to 2003 when it became a secondary school.

Its Business Studies Department took a huge step to add more value to the courses offered by inserting SIYB into the curriculum.

“So far, we have trained more than 400 students,” said school’s SIYB coordinator Alfred Bare.

“The majority of them are SYB certificate holders and the rest of them are IYB certificate holders

“The criteria used to assess were purely based on the training outcomes: precise and realistic business plans and tests at the end of the program.

“Some went for further studies and some went hack to their villages and lived meaningful lives, starting up their own micro businesses.

“This is what it means to be self-reliant and participating meaningfully in our economy.”

The school’s head of business studies Adrian Balagawi believes the SIYB programme is the way of the future “to be taught to the students in all high and secondary schools.

“I believe if this course is accepted and implemented by the authorities as a productive module, it will enable our students to generate revenue by establishing micro-businesses at an early age.”

So what better judges than the student of Kokopo Secondary School themselves?

“…this project has contributed to my wellbeing and has prompted the desire to become a businessman,” said coconut oil producer William Toliman.

“It has built up a type of confidence on how to deal with money in real life situation.

“In this real commercial and business world, the application of knowledge is what matters.”

Iceblock, baking, and sewing tyro Angelo Buak comments: “I think this is one of things that can help to reduce crimes involving young people.

“Encouraging young people to start up similar small business like this one will enable them to concentrate on his/her own business, not the peers, so that they can feel the thrill of holding hot money in their hands and forget about breaking and entering stores, pick-pocketing and also to prevent them from becoming beggars.”

Vola Vinarang, a Grade 11 male student, is into making meri blouses women.

“I found out that this course is very vital for us young Papua New Guineans,” he says.

“We need to start saving now.

“This course, I believe, will make us students come out of our shells and explore how the world of money or business is.”

Another Grade 11 student, Muro Igo, believes the SIYB programme can help students become better citizens.

“I think this is a way in which students can excel and become good citizens of this great nation,” he said.

Tavul has the last word: “If you don’t have a job, create your own job!”

For more information on the SIYB Programme, contact Manager Peter Piawu on telephone 3235816 or email pdpiawu@sbdc.gov.pg or ILO Chief Technical Adviser Julius Mutio on telephone 3235816 email jmutio@hotmail.com.