Spend It Well

Maumeta School is a government primary/junior high school in Vila, the main village on Atauro Island which is off the coast from Dili. There are 604 students (283 female and 321 male). The school has 5 buildings with 3 classrooms each, however 2 buildings are badly damaged and shouldn’t be used (although one is). It has two toilet buildings (one 8 toilets and the other 4 toilets) neither of which are operating which means there are no toilets or running water at all for the school.

The school runs 2 shifts a day (one morning and one afternoon which is normal in Timor because of overcrowding) but also don’t have enough chairs and tables even for the classrooms that are operating.

Atauro is definitely the most beautiful location we’ve built a school in to date. It’s off the coast from Dili and is just 25km long with a mountainous interior and a narrow coastal plain and is home to about 10,000 people. Most of those people are subsistence farmers and fishermen living in small villages linked by a dirt road or walking paths and its isolation from the rest of Timor (3 hours by ferry or 45 mins by speed boat) contributes to the extreme poverty. The island is incredibly beautiful with fabulous diving and snorkelling.

We’ve consulted with the government and the community about this school and what is needed is a new 4 classroom building plus the repair of the toilets and more school furniture. The government has the school on their critical list, but has no ability to do any work there in the foreseeable future. As well as Agostinho (our project manager) we also had an Australian who owns the ecotourism lodge on Atauro look at the school for us. He’s is an ex school principal and this is what he had to say:

“There are very strong trade winds blowing and some of the structural timber in the roofing is rotted out. There is no ceiling whatsoever as the leaking, rusty tin roof has destroyed it. Despite its state of disrepair, the classrooms continue to be used daily. Furthermore, the foundation of the building has major cement cancer, cracking and weakness due to the use of beach sand in the initial construction of the building and the level of salt content in the cement. They are still actually using the 4 classroom space but explain they don’t feel safe! I agree and wouldn’t want my boys in that space especially as there is a lot of wind and the timber looks rotted out in places.”

A builder we’ve worked with before has quoted USD71,000 (approx AUD90,000) (this is a good price considering that all materials and most of the tradespeople have to be brought from the mainland). We’ve raised the money from a collection of Spend it Well donors, some who’ve worked with us before and some who are new to what we do.

The First Stone Ceremony was held on the weekend, a broken down building has been removed to make space and construction is underway. We’re very excited to get this project underway.

There is a critical shortage of school furniture in East Timor. Building furniture locally (if money could be found to do this) would only lead to more deforestation. Rotary Donations in Kind is helping with the problem by rescuing used but good quality Australian school furniture which is heading for landfill, storing it and then packing it into containers for shipping to schools in East Timor. Spend it Well’s donors paid the shipping cost for a container which just arrived filled with desks and chairs for 465 children – which works out at a cost of $19 per child. Thanks to the fabulous Donations in Kind staff and volunteers for making this possible.

Ai-Asa school is looking great and its fabulous new roof is about to be installed. The roofing materials, trusses and water tank have all been donated by East Timor Roofing which was run by the Rotary Clubs of Doncaster, Melbourne and Lilydale for many years and is now run locally. The delivery trucks made it into Ai-Asa despite the rain and the roof will now be installed by Julio and his team. We’re delighted to have the benefit of ETR’s quality materials and designs and would like to say a huge thank you to them for their help.

471 desks and chairs from Victorian schools have been delivered to 4 remote schools in East Timor. Instead of being landfilled, this furniture was collected, sorted and loaded by the great volunteers at Rotary’s Donations in Kind and shipped to East Timor with an incredible donation from Sparrow Early Learning. Schools often don’t have enough furniture for the growing number of students – this furniture means that 471 children now have places to sit and learn which they didn’t have before. I think the words and photos from one of the schools below tell the story better than I can.

Our teachers at Escola Basica Filial (Basic Education Feeder School) of Fatucahi and Escola Basica Central (Central Basic Education School) of Clacuc were overjoyed with the arrival of a large quantity of chairs and desks from Australia. Every day our teachers in this district of Manufahi struggle to provide the best learning conditions for our kids. Many students come to school hungry. Some walk up to 3 kilometres to get to school. It makes our teachers sad not to be able to reward them for their commitment to their education with decent basic facilities. Until we received the desks and chairs from our friends in Australia, up to a third of our early grade students were sitting on the classroom floor. Now everyone has a place to sit and study like children in other countries. We are so grateful for the support we have received.”

Clacuc School

Julio the builder and the local community are doing a fabulous job building the new school at Faluwai. It now has a roof which means that work will be able to continue even when the wet season arrives.