COMMUNITY SNAPSHOT
PNGeans are naturally resilient and have a strong desire to fix things themselves, but often lack an ability to collaborate across multiple networks to deliver positive social change in a sustainable way. Aid has to travel through a myriad of layers to arrive at actual communities, which presents us with an opportunity to try something different.
4Lyf is a capacity-building and community support organisation that not only helps local people design their future, but also helps them source funding, connect with technical expertise and takes care of the boring cumbersome back office work (financials, reporting etc.) so that the real community actions are not interrupted.
‘The brutal fact is about 40% of Papua New Guinean’s live below the poverty line of $1.25 per day’
POVERTY IN PAPUA NEW GUINEA
Asian Development Bank, 2018
In a country of 8.25 million people, almost half of PNG residents fall below the poverty line. What’s more, rural communities, which account for 85 percent of the population, experience remarkably greater hardships. Outside of urban areas, and especially in the outer atolls, people have a significantly higher risk of death associated with travelling for days on rough seas or dense thick bush to access basic health and education services.
In general, PNG struggles with a poorly resourced health infrastructure, which saw the reemergence of polio and leprosy in 2018, as well as an ongoing battle with multi-drug resistant tuberculosis.
With 76 percent of the population aged under 35, low literacy rates and soaring school dropout statistics require immediate attention.
The reality on the ground in PNG is that we are LOSING this battle with poverty.
