An academic in charge of a large-scale construction project? Australian Jesuit Fr Quyen Vu SJ doesn’t understand how it happened either. “Yes, I laugh about my new role sometimes. I am now immersed in building construction,” he says.
This eight-hectare site in the Kasait in Timor-Leste is being transformed into the new St Ignatius of Loyola Kasait under Fr Quyen’s watch as the vice-principal of the new Jesuit school.
The first group of Year 7 students started on 15 January this year, and will continue at the school to Year 12 as new buildings are constructed on the site.
“Three times a week I visit Kasait to see how the work is going and we also have a very important site meeting to see what the next steps will be. I am learning about the building business fast,” says Fr Quyen.
Fr Quyen says the major inspiration for the project is the need for quality education in Timor-Leste, where 40 per cent of families live on less than US$1 a day.
“Kasait, about half-an-hour’s drive from Dili, is a rural area where houses are made from palm trunks, roofs are of corrugated iron, floors of soil or concrete, and drinking water is from a public tap or a river, lake or stream,” says Fr Quyen.
“Many children stop their schooling at primary level because there is no secondary school in the area and their parents cannot afford to send them to a school in an urban area. Only about a third of the population over the age of five has secondary education.”
Indonesia left Timor-Leste in 1999, leaving behind little in the way of infrastructure or qualified personnel. Nearly 70% of the buildings, homes and schools in the country were destroyed, and a huge gap was left when many of the civil servants and teachers returned to Indonesia.
This makes the teacher education college being constructed on the site, the Colégio de São João de Brito, a vital part of the country’s development process.
“Much of the teaching in the country remains poor. More than 75% of the country’s 12,000 teachers do not have formal training in education, and many lack fluency in the official languages of instruction, which are Portuguese and Tetum,” says Fr Quyen.
“Our model school adjoining the teacher education academy at our new facility will serve the dual purpose of providing practical hands-on experience for the teachers in training, and offering children in this poor, rural area the chance to continue their schooling beyond primary school.”
The new school will adopt a Jesuit charism, he adds.
“The teaching method and environment will emphasise the learning cycle of experience, reflection, action and evaluation.”
Fr Mark Raper SJ, Acting Regional Superior of Timor-Leste, has empasized the importance of the new facility under construction at Kasait.
“Nothing is more urgent now in Timor-Leste than to give hope and a future to the young people. Through the school some young people will find their future. Through teacher education the whole nation will be served.”
Main photo: Three De La Salle old boys Chris Dunn (Malvern), Fr Quyen Vu (Bankstown) and Paul Stewart (Malvern) visit the site of new Jesuit secondary school in at Kasait in Timor Leste.
This article was originally published in Province Express.