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Rural life in the Eastern Highlands Province is characterized by the dependence on goods and services supplied from outside of the rural environment, and although more of these goods and services are being produced in the urban centres of PNG the majority are still produced overseas.

Rural people in the Eastern Highlands Province therefore have a choice between living without such goods and services or using income generated from cash cropping to purchase them. These items include such basic needs as, agricultural tools and equipment, water tanks and general building hardware.

The Eastern Highlands Province with its steady increase in population faces a different set of problems from the urban industrial based centres in terms of training to meet basic needs.

The number of young people who with a basic community school education will wish to enter the formal labor market in the Eastern Highlands Province is enormous, and the task will not be one of adjusting existing vocational training systems but the building up and strengthening of rural training programs that offer support to people who wish to remain in the rural areas of the province.

The type of support needed to develop small-scale rural projects will have to focus on areas such as identification, development and supply of equipment and technologies. Also the design of training programs, and an information delivery and extension programme aimed at providing on-going technical support to a network of rural projects.

In the Eastern Highlands Province (like other provinces in PNG) the problems which most commonly face to introduction or transfer of a technology are not normally related to the technology itself, as there is an increasingly general understanding and awareness of the rural environments which these technologies are designed for.

Although there is much made of the idea of involving local participation (and by local we are referring to the end users) in the introduction and development of new technologies, there are few examples of this type of local technology development programs in PNG.

Any organisation wishing to extend technologies and skills to the rural areas of the Eastern Highlands Province (or elsewhere in PNG) has to adopt an extension operation strategy which will allow it to efficiently use the normally untapped media resources available in the Province. All too often the development of rural projects are carried out in an ad hoc and unorganized manner.

With the view of making the ATprojects operation and thereby its projects as effective as possible, it will adopt the IDDA extension technique (Information, Development, Demonstration and Assistance). The adoption of this technique will allow ATprojects to focus on the promotion of its projects in a unified manner, with a clear understanding and appreciation of the local conditions. Clearly the need for rural development is an area that must be addressed and given the amount of work to be done, both Government and Non-Government bodies have to work together. ATprojects is being set up to address one small area in the overall problems facing rural development. It is hoped that by providing appropriate information and basic technical support, that some rural projects can be assisted and if successful will be used used as models to show other rural people what is possible.

PROJECT AIMS:
ATprojects has arranged that the newspapers will be sent to all the schools in the Province by way of the Division of Educations internal mailing system, also most of the Provincial Disaster Relief Committee Church and NGO Group have agreed to help in the distribution of the newspaper and as the project develops a mailing list will be set-up. The items published will also be use for broadcast on the local radio station to reinforce the ideas being promoted.

PROJECT OBJECTIVES:
By using local resources the project will design a monthly newspaper with a format that includes the articles on the following :

• Appropriate technologies for rural development
• Development projects in the Eastern Highlands Province (and PNG) and the reasons behind they success or downfall.
• Cooking ideas and methods.
• Government and Non-Government projects aimed at rural development in the Eastern Highlands Province.
• Small rural businesses news.
• Rural credit programme news.
• Reviews of education and training programs.

PROJECT IMPLEMENTATION:
The project is designed to operate over a 3 years period, with an annual review. At the end of the second year the review will look at the long-term future of the project and if appropriate future funding.

PROJECT BENEFITS :
Without information rural people are unable to look at what options are available to them. This project will start to provide information related to these options and in doing so rural people will begin the process of picking for themselves the technologies and equipment that is appropriate to their needs.