The centre has 5 permanent staff houses, 2 classrooms, 1 workshop and 2 dormitories, one male and one female. Our piggery and poultry sheds are also built with cement. Water is pumped to a raised 1,000 gallon water tank from where it supplies the entire centre.
A Lister diesel generator provides light. Suva RTC sustained some damage during the civil unrest in the Solomon Islands, when militants stole much of the tools and equipment.
Suva RTC’s doors are open to male and female students over 18 years old, of all denominations, and who have completed Std 6 or Form 5. We can accommodate about 30 students per year. With a staff complement of 4, we aim to provide spiritual, physical, and social preparedness to young people to become useful citizens in their communities.
Suva
RTC
Guadalcanal
Suva started in 1977 as a pastoral centre of the SSEC. It was later broadened in 1983 into a vocational training centre as the need for practical education became crucial. It was forced to close down in 1999 in the height of the ethnic tension on Guadalcanal, when some buildings were damaged and tools and equipment looted. It re-opened two years later, without any outside assistance.
Our mission is to provide holistic vocational training to young Solomon men and women, and to help rehabilitate militants so that they would become respectful and constructive members of our community again.
We keep pigs, chickens and bees, and grow vegetables and melons at our centre. Sports include soccer, netball and volleyball. We have very fertile farmland, and our students are committed and determined to get the centre fully operational again after it was vandalized during the social unrest. We earn some money for the centre by selling produce, but still depend on the SIARTC and Association of Churches. Our community help us build new houses when needed, and lend us their vehicles to take goods to the market. Many of our graduates have become skillful tradesmen in the community, especially in building and agricultural industry.
