Australia to provide $50m to PNG churches
09 July 2010
BY DONALD HOOK
It seems the funding
will bypass the PNG government and AusAID, establishing a new system in which
Australian NGOs will work with PNG churches in service coordination and
delivery.
The services will include
building medical centres for people with HIV/AIDS, operating health clinics and
schools in remote areas, training medical workers and teachers, and running
primary schools.
Australian Foreign
Minister Stephen Smith said PNG churches help to resolve community conflicts, respond
to disasters and improve the income of PNG’s poorest people through growing and
marketing cash crops.
He said
Mr Smith, who has
just completed two days of talks in Alotau with PNG counterpart Sam Abal, said
Australian NGOs would work with PNG churches.
“This is a very effective
way to ensure that capacity is being built and services reach the people most
in need.”
He said that in the
past
Morning Sam - You seem to have a chip on your shoulder or something smelly on your liver.
Many thought the concept of the Australian government sidestepping the apparent local 'sticky fingers brigade' and actually getting our tax monies to where it will achieve some results was a truly 'inspired' arrangement.
If you can see where this method will not work I'm sure everyone would be delighted to hear about it. If you can suggest a better method of obtaining results in health and education for PNG people, please let us all know.
In the meantime, to highlight today's generosity and couple it with yesteryear's misguided zeal seems rather poor taste.
I'm sure no one in today's society would be prepared to accept the blame for a previous society's mistakes, especially when they are actually trying to make amends.
The Australian government has taken significant steps to overturn the misguided past.
Posted by: Paul Oates | 10 November 2010 at 08:27 AM
Thank God, Australia has finally found a way of getting the churches of PNG to work for it by offering them crumbs from its table of unholy gains from stealing Aboriginal lands and resources.
Ooops! Did I open my big mouth too far? Oh well, you can call it blood money or even speak of PNG churches being complicit to the misery of deprivation and oppression of Indigenous Australians.
No, God, could not have sent his own son to die for Aboriginal people, their land, their culture and their heritage.
That is why we PNG churches can take the Australian government's little lollies so that church administrators and Pastors can run around in nice cars and draw a nice salary out of the misery of these Aborigines.
Posted by: Samuel Kandi | 09 November 2010 at 11:26 PM
We rejoice at the aid being made available to PNG churches. But we read in the 'Sunday Chronicle' a report by Peter Pena that funding is meant for Australia to control the output of PNG churches.
It would be good if PNG churches were free to pursue education and health including HIV/AIDS awareness without outside interference.
Posted by: Bruce Copeland | 09 August 2010 at 09:39 AM
It’s interesting to note that the Church Partnerships Program will bypass the PNG government systems and AusAID.
For long, the PNG government has always asked donor agencies to streamline aid funding within existing PNG government systems and process. The recent indication to have CPP to exist as a new system, totally defeats the overall PNG government consensus for channeling aid in developing PNG.
Caution must also be exercised here because most of the service deliveries in health, education, rural health clinics etc are core government responsibilities.
By taking them further out of the public budget and purse will leave the opportunity for government to not to prioritize for the sector and for the location.
Past experiences have indicated success stories from the work of church–run programs and projects but there needs to be some caution exercised here.
I guess the question, maybe, is there another alternative process where aid can be better channelled through to Churches to deliver basic services but not in isolation from existing systems and structures.
I would say there is but it is for the relevant authorities to further identify its relevant form, structure and process.
Posted by: Serah Sipani | 21 July 2010 at 03:25 PM
Thanks that the Minister for Foreign Affairs made reference to local NGOs to work with the churches. This great move by Australia is most welcomed by the NGO community.
It is about time churches were given prominence with the work do in the remotest areas where government services are non-existent.
The only word of caution is that smaller churches should not be marginalised as some of them have good social service programs.
Thank you, Australia.
Posted by: Susan Setae | 21 July 2010 at 02:52 PM
The churches have the capacity to give massive leadership to national health and education with a scriptural focus on body, mind and soul.
This can be expressed in modern terms with a spiritual, physiological and psychological focus.
The first church to do this was the Seventh Day Adventist (SDA) church with strengthening the individual by a focus on family, faith, diet, marriage and parenting.
One of the earlier leaders in the SDA church was the American Jethro Kloss who promoted the importance of healthy living through a diet of fresh and ripe fruit and vegetables. He saw the availability of healthy food, clean water and clean air as a gift from God.
In Papua New Guinea, the churches give and receive leadership to and from the Department of Education in an era of HIV/AIDS. In schools, there is now focus on growth of the child in human values, rights and responsibilities of boys and girls and seeking sexual relationships.
There is now the problem in some PNG schools of cults that indulge in homebrew, marijuana, sex between boys and girls as initiation rites and fighting students from other schools.
The Catholic church in this country has a program in schools in which health is promoted by focus on nutritious food with no beer and homebrew, tobacco and marijuana, with clean water, hygiene and exercise. The church is part of the Health Promoting Schools program.
Churches and families can strengthen the mental health of members by reduction of violence that comes from proliferation of pornography.
This is now difficult with internet and mobile phones.
Change will not be reflected in the community for some years until this generation has grown to adulthood. Churches must educate young people into awareness of both rights and responsibilities and gender equity. Then there should be less violence between men and women.
Posted by: Bruce Copeland AIDS Holistics | 10 July 2010 at 08:26 AM
This is a very positive development. It will remove the need for highly paid foreign consultants and advice from foreigners that does not conform to PNG needs.
The churches will focus on family values and the promotion of positive marriage and parenting.
It will require great cooperation between churches and putting aside all their ancient areas of conflict. This is very much apparent in this country with the odd exception.
At the same time, the churches must ensure that their clergy conform to accepted knowledge and not any idiosyncratic values that also do not conform to national needs.
I must pay tribute to the churches of PNG that have had a major role over many years in health and education in this country. Now this work is recognized by AusAID in the form of funding.
From early colonial times, the Catholic, Anglican and Lutheran churches have shouldered the load in providing education and health care.
There has been strong support developing from Seventh Day Adventists, the Christian Brethren Church and the Evangelical Revival Church.
In the era of HIV/AIDS, churches have found that their focus needs to develop from family. I support the Christian Brethren Church and recently prepared for them a resource book on the family in an era of HIV/AIDS. Their motto is Strongim Family.
Anglicans work through Stop/AIDS. Seventh Day Adventists work through ADRA.
There is a word of caution to be extended particularly to the smaller PNG churches. Please take care when your pastors promote faith healing with HIV/AIDS. It will disillusion an AIDS sufferer who had been given false hope.
There are pastors who see their role as not to promote family, love and nutrition without tobacco/marijuana, homebrew and beer. An only focus is to oppose condoms. Give unto Caesar what belongs to Caesar. And churches focus on family.
Another aberrant approach is to promote that sufferers should not take ARV drugs but depend on the love of God. Faith is part of it.
ARV drugs prolongs life for all sufferers including believers. This pastor would certainly seek rehydration salts if he or his family were stricken with cholera. He would not place full faith in the Almighty.God has to know we are cooperating.
High Commissioner of Australia Mr Ian Kemish is doing a great hands-on approach to PNG. Going well, Your Excellency.
Posted by: Bruce Copeland | 09 July 2010 at 03:31 PM
Someone's listening at last!
____________________________
John has long been a proponent of mediating PNG development aid funds through the churches (missions), not always been a proposition that sat well with some people - KJ
Posted by: John Fowke | 09 July 2010 at 01:35 PM