Suai Media Space

Well 2010 is here, it’s the tenth anniversary of the Friends of Suai (FoS) friendship. We are planning a number of special events this year to celebrate friendship.

The first municipal elections will be held in 2 stages across the country in 2010. There are high expectations that decentralization will assist development in the rural areas. City of Port Phillip is keen to encourage development of local government to Cova Lima district.

Bill Armstrong, Chairperson of the Friends of Suai Community Steering Committee and I will travel to Suai in February to meet with counterparts and community leaders. We will be seeking feedback on both the good and challenging aspects of the friendship. We will be engaging in preliminary planning with local leadership for strategic directions into the future to be brought back to be considered by Port Phillip Council.

Pat Jessen Co-ordinator

Port Phillip residents are providing home-stay for old friend Alberto de Jesus Barros from Suai who is currently in Australia on a 6-month scholarship studying English for Academic Purposes at Taylors College.

 Alberto was travelling to Melbourne as his family and community were preparing for the 10 year Commemoration of the Suai Massacre on 06 September 2009.in Suai. Within days of his arrival he found himself at his first photo shoot as Friends of Suai were preparing for the Commemoration in Port Phillip. Photo by Jason Sammon, Port Phillip Leader.

 Alberto has been connected to the friends of Suai for five years, during that time he has hosted many Port Phillip visitors in Suai, translating and showing them around the district.

 He and his wife Lenta have 3 children; Asten 5, Anie (Anya) 2 and Joni (Zoni) is 1 month 2 weeks and 3 days.

 Alberto graduated with a Bachelor Degree in Agricultural Economy from the Faculty of Agriculture and the Department of Social Economy, at National University of Timor Leste Dili, in 2003

 He worked with UN Peacekeepers between 2000 and 2005 as a Language Assistant.  

 Later he was employed at the Suai Community Centre supported by the City of Port Phillip between 2005 and 2009 as a community development worker and financial manager.

 In 2009 he took up a new position with the International NGO Peace Dividend Trust in Suai, Cova Lima, which is a non-profit organization dedicated to making peace and humanitarian operations more efficient, effective and equitable.

Info Timor (IT) crew with Andrew Mahar from InfoXchange Australia are in Suai and finalising the set-up of the computer workshop and training room at the Community Centre. This photograph shows students at the computers in the new training room. As Simao said in a text message this week, it is a ‘dream of the last two years is happening now’ with the establishment of the computer centre.

Weekly training is being planned by InfoTimor with Alipio from Baucau who will travel to Suai each week to assist with building the computer centre into a business enterprise. Alipio set up the Baucau operation and the plan is that the Community Centre will set up an Internet Cafe along with the Youth Centre to deliver internet to the local community.

ASSOCIATION OF ENGLISH TEACHERS FORMS: Friends of Suai volunteer teachers have been training English language teachers from the Cova Lima secondary and pre-secondary schools for the past four weeks. Port Phillip residents and ESL teachers, Desleigh Kent and Jenny Jaensch together with Jenny Green, Barbara Selvay, Helen Nankervis will conclude classes today.

Pat Jessen spoke briefly with Simao, Co-ordinator in Suai, this morning. Simao and the Timor English teachers were preparing for the last class and a celebratory lunch at the school which was being prepared by his wife Palmira and friends. District Education Department representatives will also attend the celebration.

In 2006 the Friends of Suai delivered video production equipment to the Covalima Youth Centre and since then workshops have been held every year that have produced content that is being featured on Suai Media Space.

Design element taking visitor into Youth section.

VegOut donated $2,000 to a Permaculture Garden in Suai and St Kilda Artist Liz Milsom (daughter of George Milsom) and I recently took Suai Loro and Arte Moris artists Anata and Kiki there. Anata spent the whole time video taping – if you could see Arte Moris the Free Art School in Dili you would see why.

Arte Moris also have vegetable gardens, compost heaps and sculptures built from recycled bits and pieces. The boys were homesick and this was like a home away from home.

VegOut is the community garden in St Kilda established on the St Kilda Bowling club grounds. When the Bowling Club closed down a group of artists established their studios there and the lawns were converted to organic garden plots for members of the community to work.

St Kilda residents predominantly live in flats, so to have access to a garden is highly desired by some of the residents. In more recent years the group invited local/regional Produce growers to establish a Producer’s market next to the gardens on the first Saturday of every month. It has grown into a very popular event for locals. We took Anata and Kiki along because it’s a great atmosphere, but also because VegOut sell Timorese coffee there for the Friends of Suai and Timorese Melbourne residents have a preserved chilli chutney stall there. After nine years the friendship really is beginning to burrow its way into the community when this is happening.

While Natalino and Grinaldo were in Melbourne they spent two weeks in the Fine Arts Department of Monash University. This is some photographs of the work they did while they were here.

From Pat Jessen Co-ordinator Friends of Suai in Port Phillip:

Hi I am now back home in Australia after 3 weeks in Timor Leste. Simao Barreto, Coordinator of the Community Centre and I went to Baucau to visit the 4 Suai trainees at Info Timor. They had finished their first month training on Ubuntu office suite and PowerPoint and were ready to learn the technical side of refurbishing computers and internet.