Friendship with East Timor
The idea of forming a friendship relationship with East Timor was seeded in the Annie Dennis (and others) Knitting Group.
The City of Darebin has established a friendship relationship with City of Bacau in East Timor and the Westgarth Primary School is linked to a school in that province. The Annie Dennis Children’s Centre has become a member of the Australian East Timor Friendship School Project and has recently been linked with a kindergarten and early years school in the City of Bacau called Pre-Primaria Santa Ursula. We have been given a little information about this school: there are 120 students, the school has one building with five classrooms, one staff room and five teachers, school runs from Monday to Saturday, the language for teaching is Tetun and Portuguese and the Principal is Sister Laura Pakung Ossu.
We are currently putting together an album of photos and drawings of Annie Dennis Children’s Centre to send to our friendship kindergarten and school, together with some materials so that they may make an album to send to us. We will be working towards establishing a cultural and educational exchange involving the children in the kindergarten and Rainbow room. This will be pursued primarily through music and art projects, drawing on the skills of our local East Timorese community.
We hope to brighten the lives of some East Timorese children through this friendship as well as teach our children about the lives of kids in our neighbouring country.
Money raised through fundraising conducted by the Annie Dennis (and others) Knitting Group will be used to buy equipment for the kindergarten in East Timor and to help fund other projects aimed at parents and children through organisations such as the Alola Foundation.
We will keep you posted on what we learn about our new East Timorese friends.
