The Department of Education Secretary, Dr. Uke Kombra and Chief Executive Officer of PNG Sports Foundation, Albert Veratau both signed a memorandum of understanding aimed at strengthening the relationship between both organizations in a brief ceremony in Port Moresby on Wednesday.
“Under the MOU both organizations will promote and support Physical Education (PE) in all schools throughout Papua New Guinea.”
“This ensures the promotion of the ‘Go Rural to Go Global Sports Development Program’ by introducing Sports Nursery development skills in primary schools to compliment the teaching of Physical Education.”
“It will also be used to promote sports leadership training program in secondary schools to produce coaches, technical officials and sports administrators.”
He said the MOU will specifically identify the scope of services to be provided, establish the authorized agency as well as decision makers or owners in this undertaking as well as financial and human resources that is required for the provision of services.
PNGSF will assist and promote Physical Education, Sports Nursery and Leadership Program in schools’ sports programs.
“PNGSF will facilitate the ‘Go Rural to Go Global (GRtGG) Sports Nursery’ program in Primary school targeting age groups from 6–16-year-old students and will also provide appropriate Sports Leadership training for secondary school students.”
The GRtGG and Building World Class Leadership are two strategies introduced over the past year by PNGSF to improve sports development in PNG, aimed at monetizing sports so that it becomes an industry that can effectively contribute towards the economy of the country.
“The leadership program is also aimed at developing good citizenship values and other nation-building benefits for our future generations as relevant tangible outcomes from GRtGG.”
Dr. Kombra added that the Department of Education will ensure teachers’ colleges offer appropriate training to produce more PE teachers to feed into the elementary and secondary schools.
“The Department is to provide teaching aids and resource booklets for the teaching and learning of PE in the schools.”
“DOE is to promote inter-house sports in schools and inter-school sports carnivals in the provinces.”
Additionally, an interesting feature of the MOU is the initiative to teach and learn foreign languages, an option being French, and an internationally acclaimed lingua franca which has a wide global spread.