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Reflections on the contributions of many for Port Pirie’s commitment to Kirabati by Brenda Keenan, Director of Catholic Education, Diocese of Port Pirie

The generous support of our Port Pirie diocesan schools was nothing short of remarkable. This generosity and overwhelming commitment was the impetus for our inaugural outreach experience in Abaokoro with the Sisters of the Good Samaritan. The Holy Spirit was with us when we ‘checked in’ at the Adelaide airport bound for Kiribati. How we were able to get all of the resources to Melbourne, then Fiji and finally to Kiribati remains a mystery. Everyone returned home with their luggage at least 15kg lighter than when we departed!

Each of our schools provided financial support to participants, covered TRT costs for a couple of days and donated much needed and requested resources for the Early Learning Centre and local schools at Abaokoro. These resources included; tents, buckets, tarpaulins, medical supplies, guitar strings, cash receipt books, printer cartridges, scissors, laminating pouches, bulldog clips, rubber gloves, office supplies, coloured paper, fry pans, freezer bags, plastic seats, totem tennis sets, volley ball nets, bike pumps, soccer balls, frisbees, wooden jigsaws, plastic toys, small dolls, big books, reading books, book marks, dictionaries, posters, educational CDs and software, primary and secondary school curriculum resources, marker pens, world maps, metre rulers and numeracy charts to name a few!

As a system of Catholic schools, CESA generously provided 5 decommissioned laptop computers and a number of digital and video cameras to the Good Samaritan Sisters in Kiribati. About 12 months ago, I approached the I.T. department with a query about the CEO Computer Fleet Refresh Project – my question was a simple one, what was going to happen with the ‘decommissioned’ laptop computers? Many months later 5 of these laptops and other media devices made their way to Abaokoro. We carried these as hand luggage, weighing in at about 9kg per bag. I would like to thank George Petrallas and his team for their support in making available the recycled laptop computers. To those involved in the ‘cleaning and clearing’ of the hard drives my thanks and certainly the thanks of the Good Sam Sisters. Our thanks is also extended to Karen Sloane and her team for ‘loading’ the computers with appropriate software and for the provision of digital and video cameras. These lap tops and digital cameras have already been put to great use.

A part of our morning schedule whilst in Abaokoro was to run computer and media workshops with the Sisters. Their computer skills are quite good and their capacity to learn new skills and techniques is fantastic.

Over the course of our time in Abaokoro we were able to make presentations of educational resources to the SGS Early Learning Centre, the local primary school, the local junior secondary school and to Sister Maata (Principal) of Immaculate Heart School, a Catholic boarding school at the end of the island. All resources were received with great excitement and deep gratitude.