BY MELISHA YAFOI-Post Courier
At the age of 16, Raylance Mesa knew what she needed to do to help her people back home in the beautiful Island of Tami, Morobe Province.
She was just a simple high school student attending Lae Secondary School but had a heart of gold for her people.
The Post-Courier had a chance to talk to Raylance and her proud dad Mr Mesa after she won the IBBM Young entrepreneur and the overall Westpac Outstanding Women award for 2019.
When asked about what inspired her to do what she did, the now 24-year-old proudly told the paper that her trips to her village every school holidays enabled her to see and understand the problems and challenges hundreds of people on the island face on a day to day basis.
She said the two main things were the awareness on climate change and education.
Ms Mesa said because she was fortunate to be given an education in town (Lae), it enabled her to realise the imbalance that is happening in societies across the country and opened her eyes to see the needs of her people back in Tami.
“That was the drive that inspired me.
“I really wanted to help my people I want to at least get something to them that you know at least it’s something similar to the opportunities that I have,” Raylance said.
She said it all started with awareness, basically sharing everything that she had learnt in school with those in the village and to her amazement, the people were very eager to listen and learn about the things she was telling them.
“I keep telling them that we can’t wait for the government to wait for things to come to us, we have to do something so that’s when it all started.
“I started carrying out awareness with a couple of friends, with my mum, brothers and my dad and they’ve been always supportive in what I was doing,” she said.
Soon enough that awareness spiked up some interest among the community leaders who wanted to do something about the effects of climate change on the island.
Raylance said the community leaders, after being educated on the impacts of climate change, wanted to do more so they started consulting her on ideas or things that they could do to help the community.
She said after consultations and discussions and with her guidance as the architect of the project, they went and mobilised the community to begin work on the island.
“Basically we try to look at the problems that are on the island like climate change which they were not aware of, so I created talks and awareness to educate the people and eventually my uncles helped me to talk to the people,” she said.
“We educated the people and with their willingness we built sea walls out of dead coral reefs and coconut trunks.
“The young men in the village were really eager to do something for the community and it was quite an achievement for them as well,” she said.
Apart from this small but significant project, the drive to do more began to grow and that led her to help with the renovation and building of classrooms for the Tami Island Primary school.
She said it was indeed a sad scenario because in 2013 the school was still serving as a community school with only two teachers including the head master, the oldest student was a 25-year-old doing grade five.
“At this age you could already be in college or working so that also indicated that there was really a problem,
she said.
“So people started building classrooms, they renovated the guest house and use whatever they could find on the island. Eventually, they upgraded the school from a community school to a primary school.
They now have grade eights and they bought a laptop, printer and a generator to start off. We have come a long way and we now have desk for students and eight teachers for each grade so it’s quite a good number now, before there were only two.”
Raylance said the small work that she did with the help of friends, family and community members has exposed her to many organisations that get to recognise what she did.
“They wanted to lend a hand to help with the projects that I do and we even have Australian companies like Sago studios who wanted to do awareness and bring something to the island.
“They even visit the island as well to see what was going on,” she said.
Raylance said there’s a quite a lot still to do but she is picking up one thing at a time so that she can identify what’s important that the people would need urgently and then what can be done later on.
“My encouragement would be all of us are talented and gifted in different ways, probably I am good with what I do in architecture and I help communities with infrastructure and all that.
“But one of our fellow ladies could be interested in nursing or something or you could at least lend a hand, just a little thing it would go a long way for people,” she said.
When the paper asked her dad Mr Mesa about his daughter’s achievement, he was speechless with pride at how much his daughter has achieved.
He said when Raylance first approached him with this idea, his only advice was go for it and I will give you the support that you need.
“I am so proud, I am speechless.
“Because at the end of the day she is helping my people back home,” Mr Mesa said.
Raylance will be graduating next month at the University of Technology with a Bachelor in Architect.
She is currently completing her graduate program with ExxonMobil PNG.
Go to this link for more: https://postcourier.com.pg/can-really-matter/
She was just a simple high school student attending Lae Secondary School but had a heart of gold for her people.
The Post-Courier had a chance to talk to Raylance and her proud dad Mr Mesa after she won the IBBM Young entrepreneur and the overall Westpac Outstanding Women award for 2019.
When asked about what inspired her to do what she did, the now 24-year-old proudly told the paper that her trips to her village every school holidays enabled her to see and understand the problems and challenges hundreds of people on the island face on a day to day basis.
She said the two main things were the awareness on climate change and education.
Ms Mesa said because she was fortunate to be given an education in town (Lae), it enabled her to realise the imbalance that is happening in societies across the country and opened her eyes to see the needs of her people back in Tami.
“That was the drive that inspired me.
“I really wanted to help my people I want to at least get something to them that you know at least it’s something similar to the opportunities that I have,” Raylance said.
She said it all started with awareness, basically sharing everything that she had learnt in school with those in the village and to her amazement, the people were very eager to listen and learn about the things she was telling them.
“I keep telling them that we can’t wait for the government to wait for things to come to us, we have to do something so that’s when it all started.
“I started carrying out awareness with a couple of friends, with my mum, brothers and my dad and they’ve been always supportive in what I was doing,” she said.
Soon enough that awareness spiked up some interest among the community leaders who wanted to do something about the effects of climate change on the island.
Raylance said the community leaders, after being educated on the impacts of climate change, wanted to do more so they started consulting her on ideas or things that they could do to help the community.
She said after consultations and discussions and with her guidance as the architect of the project, they went and mobilised the community to begin work on the island.
“Basically we try to look at the problems that are on the island like climate change which they were not aware of, so I created talks and awareness to educate the people and eventually my uncles helped me to talk to the people,” she said.
“We educated the people and with their willingness we built sea walls out of dead coral reefs and coconut trunks.
“The young men in the village were really eager to do something for the community and it was quite an achievement for them as well,” she said.
Apart from this small but significant project, the drive to do more began to grow and that led her to help with the renovation and building of classrooms for the Tami Island Primary school.
She said it was indeed a sad scenario because in 2013 the school was still serving as a community school with only two teachers including the head master, the oldest student was a 25-year-old doing grade five.
“At this age you could already be in college or working so that also indicated that there was really a problem,
she said.
“So people started building classrooms, they renovated the guest house and use whatever they could find on the island. Eventually, they upgraded the school from a community school to a primary school.
They now have grade eights and they bought a laptop, printer and a generator to start off. We have come a long way and we now have desk for students and eight teachers for each grade so it’s quite a good number now, before there were only two.”
Raylance said the small work that she did with the help of friends, family and community members has exposed her to many organisations that get to recognise what she did.
“They wanted to lend a hand to help with the projects that I do and we even have Australian companies like Sago studios who wanted to do awareness and bring something to the island.
“They even visit the island as well to see what was going on,” she said.
Raylance said there’s a quite a lot still to do but she is picking up one thing at a time so that she can identify what’s important that the people would need urgently and then what can be done later on.
“My encouragement would be all of us are talented and gifted in different ways, probably I am good with what I do in architecture and I help communities with infrastructure and all that.
“But one of our fellow ladies could be interested in nursing or something or you could at least lend a hand, just a little thing it would go a long way for people,” she said.
When the paper asked her dad Mr Mesa about his daughter’s achievement, he was speechless with pride at how much his daughter has achieved.
He said when Raylance first approached him with this idea, his only advice was go for it and I will give you the support that you need.
“I am so proud, I am speechless.
“Because at the end of the day she is helping my people back home,” Mr Mesa said.
Raylance will be graduating next month at the University of Technology with a Bachelor in Architect.
She is currently completing her graduate program with ExxonMobil PNG.
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