25 villages in Sialum LLG were declared healthy and defection free

The Bakesu Revival Church of Papua New Guinea in partnership with the Community Learning and Development Section under the Morobe Provincial Government's Community Development Division, successfully transformed 25 traditional villages to Modern, Healthy and Safe Villages.

According to Healthy Island Concept Chairman for Sialum LLG, Pius Clemence, without knowledge of the existence of such concept, the late BRC Advisor, Mr. Jack Maning introduced a similar concept when building the church headquarter in Nunzen village, in 1994 with the term, ‘Lukautim Station’ or ‘Gutpla Sindaun'.

"In 2011, we brought the concept to Kebrum Village ward 8 of the LLG and we practiced it."

The concept was later clarified by then Tewai-Siassi District Health Administrator, Tureng Tamba, as the ‘Healthy Island Concept' and Kebrum Village was then inspected by the Provincial Health team where selected villagers were taken into training under the concept to further the practice into other villages.

A Memorandum of Understanding was signed between the Morobe Provincial Government and BRC to support the Healthy Island Project on the 16th of October 2022.

However, without support, the Bakesu Revival Church went ahead with the program covering 25 villages out of the existing 120 villages in the LLG.

Provincial Community Learning and Development Coordinator, Siove Done, who was a driving force behind the 25 village's achievement, emphasized on the contribution of the Department of Community Development stated that they are implementing policy for Intergrated Community Development.

"The deparment is focused on crosscutting issues and we have identified three approaches that we have worked with to achieve the Mordern Healthy Village and they are; Community Governance, Community Learning Community Economic and Community Environment."

She explained that as a result of a structured community under the church, it is much easier to achieve the concept.

The church used the ‘people helping people' approach as a motivational tool and also used church programs to motivate and educate elders, youths and children in working towards achieving the concept.

The church now aims to cover the remaining villages and also seeks financial support from responsible government offices to do so.

Bakesu Revival Church Communities in other provinces are also running the Healthy Island Concept Project.