KOROIPITA EDUCATION EXCELLENCE
40 GRADUATE WITH COMPUTER SKILLS
Forty people, mostly residents have graduated with Microsoft Excel skills after a week long certificate training course at Koroipita Model Community conducted by Australian volunteer Mike Lane .
The graduates are community residents, technical and construction staff and Block Leaders who make up the elected Community Council.
The participants were taught record keeping and analytical skills which will be beneficial for their studies , work , income generating projects , and for Council administration .
Mike Lane is an exceptional teacher and leader. He is a retired (CPA) accountant from Darwin and he believes in sharing and transferring skills to people in need.
The training has been funded by Mike’s family Trust Fund and the Darwin Memorial Uniting Church. He also helped fund other projects such as water tanks and solar lights at Koroipita and in country areas .
The Koroipita Education Support Programme has been operating since 2006 to improve access and quality of education for the children. There is a computer school and daily supervised homework group sessions operating from the community hall.
A total of 336 children have graduated from the two registered kindergartens, and this is step one in their advancement.
The community currently boasts 99.5% school retention rate. There are 30 students enrolled in tertiary schools each year .
Around 30 students top their class or achieve top third rankings in primary and secondary schools in the area every year . This is an astonishing achievement for people of this background .
The model towns prescription means the town is not a comfort zone , it is like a school of life where people enter to learn and are expected to move on to tertiary education good jobs and marriages thus creating a vacancy for the next family . The outstanding result is that there are virtually no second generation youths staying on in the community .
The Trust is working with its partners, the New Zealand Aid Programme and the Fiji Government to advance plans for a major extension of another 145 houses from 2019 onwards. That would increase the estate to 386 homes for 1740 people .
The Trust also acknowledges the private donors for their assistance in the Education Support Programme.