By Evah Kuamin
The United Nations Children’s Education Fund (UNICEF) in a report released late last month stated that cities around the world were failing children.
In Papua New Guinea, this statement holds no exception and is quite evident in the three big cities of the country – Port Moresby, Lae and Mt Hagen.
In Lae, street kids are a normal sight they are either liked, disliked, pitied and sometimes helped by people.
But it takes, people with hearts of gold and those who can give their time, efforts and maybe spend a dime; to really understand why this children are who and what they are.
Fr Arnold Schidmt from the Archdiocese of Lae runs weekly literacy classes for such disadvantaged children under the Catholic Church’s Street Kids Project.
He even provides with the assistance of the Lae Biscuit Company, a plate of biscuit and cordial or water for the children daily.
The aim of the program run by the church is to basically assist children in learning to read and write in both Tok-Pisin and English.
The literacy classes which are conducted in Tok- Pisin and English was initiated in 2006 basically to help children who were living on the streets in the city.
The towering bulky German priest spends every ounce of his time daily overseeing the classes and has seen a lot of children make it into state-run elementary, primary and vocational schools.
He has engaged three mothers of whom two teach the Tok-Pisin Classes and the other, who is a retired primary school teacher, teaches the English class.
Fr. Arnold says children are not forced or pressured into learning – they are only given the opportunity when they desire to learn and so begin with the Tok-Pisin Class and advanced onto the English class.
“All these children come from different backgrounds with their own stories but we try our best to help them with the basics of education,” Fr Arnold remarks.
Most of the children who take up the literacy classes come from broken homes and families.
Fr Arnold remarks that most of them are either illiterate because their parents couldn’t afford to send them to school, both parents are dead, separated or divorced or they live on the streets in the city.
Funding for the program comes purely from donations sought from Germany by Fr Arnold, the Lae Biscuit Company, the Lioness Club of Lae and other individuals.
He adds that on a daily basis, he attends to about 10 to 20 children who come from all parts of the city.
Most of them he adds live in the settlements and compounds with some coming from as far as Situm in the Nawaeb District.
Graduation for the students is held twice a year in mid-June and December.