April 16th 2009 - Community Learning Centre for ATS Oro Village Community

Port Moresby: Today the Digicel Foundation launched their 14th Community Learning Centre (CLC) in partnership with the ATS Oro Village Community and NGO Tembari Childrens Care.

The Digicel Foundation strives to support projects that provide opportunities that will inspire and build positive energy in its citizens, which will in turn lead to stronger, self sufficient communities. The Community Learning Centre in the ATS Oro Village community is the realization of Digicel Foundation’s vision to make a difference and play a positive role in peoples lives in PNG.

Only this year the ATS Oro Village Community and the NGO Tembari Childrens Care started a community run pre-school. The community put their hands together to raise funding to purchase timber and roofing iron to build a shelter as a classroom for the disadvantaged and often orphaned children that cannot afford to go to school in this community. The four teachers are all voluntary teachers from the ATS Oro community. Already the pre-school has 80 children and the numbers are still growing.

Digicel Foundation recognised their need through one of its partners, the WeCARe Foundation, a Foundation that focuses on supporting women and children that are at risk. The second hand container used for the CLC was kindly donated and fabricated by Steamships Shipping and includes a library with 200 books donated by partner Hope Worldwide PNG. Besides a pre-school the CLC will also be used for adult literacy classes after school hours as many adults in the community are illiterate. There are also plans to use it for skill based training such as cooking and sewing for the mothers.

For the Digicel Foundation this is only the beginning as it plans on rolling out a total of 25 MLC’s in PNG by the end of May 2009. Another 25 MLC’s are planned to be rolled out in the following 12 months bringing the total to 50 MLC’s launched in PNG