NVS extends New Guinea Islands outreach
ENB Governor Michael Marum with NVS acting executive director Jerry David, executive officer Poponu Wenda, staff and stakeholders in ENB recently
FOLLOWING its successful visit and call-out in West New Britain, the National Volunteer Service (NVS) has advanced to the second phase of its New Guinea Islands (NGI) regional outreach, launching its dual call for partner organisations and national professional volunteers in East New Britain Province.
The outreach marks a major step forward in implementing National Executive Council (NEC) Decisions Nos. 220 and 335 of 2025. These directives mandate the NVS-an agency under the Ministry of Defence-to scale up its nationwide footprint to 900 professional volunteers, strategically placing skilled manpower into rural and underserved communities to eliminate service delivery gaps.
As a matter of priority and protocol, the visiting NVS team met in a high-level courtesy briefing with East New Britain Governor, Mr Michael Marum, and Provincial Administrator, Mr Levi Mano. The meeting served to reinforce the East New Britain Provincial Government's strong commitment to collaborating with NVS on targeted socio-economic development efforts.
Speaking during the consultations, NVS management highlighted that the provincial partnership will focus on deploying qualified Papua New Guineans into key sectors, including health, education, agriculture, and community development, ensuring that knowledge is transferred directly to grassroots communities.
This drive in East New Britain closely follows the momentum generated in West New Britain just over a week ago, where ground-breaking steps were taken to establish the NVS NGI Regional Volunteer Academy at Moramora Technical School. The NVS team aimed to replicate this strategic synergy in East New Britain, empowering local District Development Authorities (DDAs), churches, and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to use volunteers to drive change.
Call to action for host organisations and volunteers:
* Partner Organisations: Provincial authorities, DDAs, faith-based institutions, and community civil groups in East New Britain needing professional manpower are urged to apply to host NVS volunteers. Host partners must be prepared to demonstrate strategic need and ensure adequate local support and housing for the volunteers.
* Professional Volunteers: Qualified, resilient, and patriotic citizens holding degrees, diplomas, or technical trade certificates in healthcare, teaching, farming/agriculture, and social work are challenged to step forward and submit their Expressions of Interest (EOI) to serve with NVS.
The NVS team visited tertiary institutions, visited potential sites for volunteer placements in the province conducting public awareness, distribution of application forms, and stakeholder consultations over the last 4 days, ending the weeks provincial visit with a debrief of the week's activities on the provincial radio station, Radio East New Britain (RENB) on Friday.
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