Our aim is to spend three weeks living in Apia and working with locals on some much-needed refurbishment that would otherwise not occur for years, if not for our efforts both in fundraising and manual labour.

Among other things, this will include:

Projects at the Theological College.
  • Paint some classrooms. This will involve cleaning, scraping, sanding and painting.

  • Doing repairs / replacements for the library computers. There are about 8 computers there but they look old and many are breaking down. We are trying to get new ones donated to be shipped over and installed there.

 Projects at the School for Disabled Children
  • We have recently accepted an offer to spend some time working in the local school which cares for mentally and/or physically disabled children. Our main project will be upgrading the already existing computer lab. The current computers have so little memory that they can only run MS Paint. Fortunately several sponsors have donated enough computers and software products to upgrade the entire computer lab. Our project will be installing these computers and fixing any of the school's that are salvageable.
  • We are also clearing a field (with bush knives) for a future project that the school is planning.

Projects at the Home for the Aged

  • The main thing is to paint the roof. From the photo of the aerial photo of the building you can see that there is a lot of roof! Some parts are newer than others, so there is no need to do all of it. She wants it painted the same colour, which is simply the grey metallic colour of corrugated iron, so it’s not as if there is going to be a super change in appearance, but it is a good job. In fact, there will need to be some minor repairs to the iron and perhaps sealing with an anti-rust paint first.


  • The building has carved wooden poles around the place holding up the roofing. They would like these to be painted again, as a way of protecting the wood.
  • There are some minor repairs to the gutters and downpipes as well.
  • There is some painting of white walls to be done, from up on the roof, of the 2nd-storey rooms.

  • And, of course, we'll be assisting the nuns in their everyday work of feeding and looking after the elderly residents.
On the whole, it is not a ‘start from scratch’ building project like we have had in recent years. But don’t let this discourage you. The Little Sisters still operate as their founder instructed, which is to ask for alms and they still go around asking, even here in and Australia. It is a worthy project for a group doing much good without government funding.
    Posted by Warrane College Workcamp