The keyboard warrior helping Papua New Guinean schoolchildren
Leonie Jarrett reports on a program started by an Australian university student that is delivering free computers to schools across the country.
Computer lab at St Anslem Primary School, Jiwaka Province. Credit: LiteHaus
Each school day in Papua New Guinea, over two million students walk to school across the valleys, along the rivers and through the towns. When the students arrive, only eight per cent have access to school computers.
For most of this eight per cent, the opportunity of digital access is the realisation of a dream. A dream that began in 2017 when Jack Growden, then a 20-year-old Australian university student, visited the Kuta Primary School in Western Highlands Province.
“Having these computers has changed everything for our school, inspiring students and teachers to strive for greatness.”
Growden noticed that the school was lacking the tools to deliver a quality education that prepares students for the digital world. Determined to address this issue, he donated his laptop to the school. He also promised to return with 12 more computers to build a computer lab. To fulfil this pledge, he founded LiteHaus International.
Fast forward to today and 350 schools across 18 provinces in PNG now have access to digital learning tools and opportunities because of Growden’s efforts.
Refurbishing and repurposing more than 6000 computers from businesses and schools across Australia, LiteHaus International has made more than 1.4 million hours of digital usage possible for 235,000 students in PNG. Crucially, LiteHaus International’s programs are PNG-led and supported.
The group’s Country Director, Peter Raim, was there on day one, standing beside Growden when he made his promise. Raim has led the efforts ever since with his local team of IT technicians.
LiteHaus partners with local firms Niunet and the Sir Brian Bell Foundation. Niunet offers an offline e-library with over 6.2 million educational articles at the fingertips of students in need. The Sir Brian Bell Foundation has backed the installation of computer labs since 2020, enabling the program to scale to every corner of PNG.
Libraries across many Highlands schools once held less than 100 books, many outdated, on their shelves. Growden recalls visiting schools in Jiwaka Province where, “the latest encyclopaedias available to the students cited Jimmy Carter as the US President and still featured the USSR on their maps.”
As he says, “Expecting students to learn effectively in this environment is like asking a marathon runner to train in a telephone box.”
For schools across PNG, the computer labs have lifted the standard of learning offered to their tenacious students.
Aviamp Primary School in Jiwaka Province has proven what is possible when given the opportunity to deliver digital learning. IT teacher Sly Vii Yoan has delivered IT classes to students and teachers multiple times a day ever since her school received a computer lab in 2022 from LiteHaus International.
She says: “Having these computers has changed everything for our school, inspiring students and teachers to strive for greatness.”
Growden realised that many teachers had never used a computer themselves. In 2023, LiteHaus launched a digital skills training program. This is a hands-on, five-day course that builds teachers’ confidence and competence in using technology in the classroom.
A teacher in Chimbu Province says of her experience: “Before, I knew little about Microsoft Excel but now I’m mastering it. These skills have changed the way I teach.”
Teacher training now runs regularly alongside the installation of labs, ensuring that technology becomes an integral, rather than an intimidating, part of education.
As PNG celebrates its 50th anniversary of independence, questions about its future are inevitably raised.
Growden says: “In a world where much of the human experience is taking place over digital dimensions, digital inequality not only denies the future leaders of PNG access to opportunities, but rather citizenship in the digital world. Students making that long walk to school today will still be walking and talking in the 2070s and 2080s. They must gain the skills to lead in the world that awaits them and that begins in a digital classroom.”
LiteHaus is constantly looking for donations of decommissioned second-hand computers from companies, schools and families. For information on how to donate, see litehausinternational.org.
This article was first published in the November 2025 – January 2026 issue of Paradise, the in-flight magazine of Air Niugini.
