PROJECT OVERVIEW: The Island of New Guinea is split-up by an artificial border separating the state of Papua New Guinea from West Papua. Tribes, clans and families are divided by this border but still cross the border irregularly. On the Papua New Guinean side in the Western Province, refugees and migrants of West Papua receive help in UNHCR refugee camps. Today, the Diocese of Daru-Kiunga provides health and education services at the former camps and the rural villages close to the border. As the population is predominantly catholic, every village has its own chapel. At Miniponone a new chapel was built in cooperation with the local community and the Diocese of Daru-Kiunga. Paulinus Bonmini, a migrant from West Papua and carpenter, was primarily responsible for implementing the project. The Diocese’s project office planned the chapel to give this simple spiritual building a special meaning and quality through design. This project involved unskilled members of the Minipon community to encourage capacity building. The chapel was built under challenging circumstances. After transportation by truck and a jungle river cruise by dinghy, (2-4 hours depending on the water level of the Ok-Ao River) all the construction materials were carried by hand for 1.5 hours through the rainforest. 40 kg bags of cement had to be split, meaning that the transportation required for one bag from the waterfront to the building site took about 4.5 hours. The construction of the tiny 6 x 9 meter chapel was finished after three months.
CATEGORY: Civil Society SETTING: Rural STATUS:Completed
By: Catholic Diocese of Daru-Kiunga
COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT: The project involves an ongoing partnership between the local church, Catholic Diocese of Daru-Kiunga, and indigenous grassroots communities and aims to strengthen grassroots development capacities. Skilled refugees are employed by the Diocese, involving migrants and other vulnerable groups and minorities in local development and governance. This promotes sustainable peace and security based on traditional relational processes of peace-building and conflict management ('Melanesian Way'). Unskilled members of the communities are engaged to encourage capacity building. Technical assistance of volunteer professionals builds on indigenous knowledge and grassroots processes, demonstrating climate-adaptive designs and alternative technology based on indigenous knowledge and traditional tenure.
PARTNERS: Horizont3000 is one of the oldest and largest Austrian non-government development cooperation organisations. We offer support to people in our partner countries in their aspiration to improve the quality of their lives in a sustainable and humane way. At the behest of grassroots Catholic development cooperation organisations and with the support of the Austrian Development Agency, we have specialised in the implementation of programs and projects and the deployment of technical assistance personnel. HORIZONT3000 commits to the SDGs, the Sustainable Development Goals of the UN 2030 Agenda. We work on achieving the SDGs worldwide in our projects and, as a member of SDG Watch Austria, support their implementation in Austria.
FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT
r.kasik@outlook.com
WEBSITES
http://www.missionfrontier.org/
http://www.horizont3000.at/en/
REPRESENTED IN THIS PROJECT