Sarah Togher has a long history of volunteering – from working at her local older persons’ home during her schooldays, to volunteering for HIV and AIDS charities during her days as a nurse. Her most adventurous volunteering experience was a stint in Sri Lanka with Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO) in 2008. ‘[Volunteering] offers you that connection with people you probably wouldn’t meet in your day job,’ she says. ‘It challenges you, you learn stuff. It’s always good fun.’
When Sarah relocated to Wellington from the UK in 2017, she found work as a recruiter for VSA. It was through that role that she heard about an opportunity to volunteer in the Autonomous Region of Bougainville in 2019. Covid meant that assignment never went ahead – but in July 2023, Sarah headed out as a Unit Nurse Mentor at the Buin Health Centre in Buin, Autonomous Region of Bougainville, supporting the Director of Nursing Service there, Makunia Lontuo. It was a decision she never doubted, after speaking to a former VSA volunteer who had volunteered with the same organisation. ‘She said she’d go back, and she always felt safe,’ says Sarah. ‘Those two honest things led me to apply.’
Sarah's place of work in Buin, Autonomous Region of Bougainville.
A big part of mentoring nurses in Buin was developing their confidence and pride in their work. Sarah noticed in her first few weeks that the southern part of the country, where Buin is located, seemed to be ‘bottom of the pile’. ‘When incidents came up in meetings, nurses would say, oh, well, it’s Buin,’ says Sarah. Local nurses would often have to refer patients to another hospital – the nearest two being four and eight hours away on unsealed roads.
Sarah registered with the Papua New Guinea Nursing Council – the same body as local nurses – which she felt gave her some credibility in the eyes of the locals. ‘I could say, oh, well these are the standards, and they’re not being met,’ she said. ‘I wanted them to feel that their work mattered.’ After travelling through the regions of Arawa and Buka, Sarah was also able to give some feedback on services there to her colleagues in Buin. ‘I could say, oh, in these areas, we’re actually doing a bit better. So that gave them a bit of kudos,’ she says.
Another key aspect of capacity building was modelling key behaviours and building connections rather than offering lectures. ‘I would just roll up early, clean and tidy,’ explains Sarah. ‘If I said I’d agreed to meet somebody, we would meet, we’d follow up.’ While she was settling in, Sarah did a six-week online course with the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine – which provided some great resources to share with locals and gave her a grounding in the unique challenges of practising medicine in a tropical environment.
Sarah (foreground) with some of her local team.
The Autonomous Region of Bougainville had its challenges, Sarah says. Often, her team contended with power cuts, or came up against a lack of resources. But this taught her something, too. ‘I witnessed some very difficult situations that nurses had to cope with,’ she explains. ‘My frame of reference being Wellington, you automatically reach for things – and find they’re not there. And yet when the chips were down, the nurses rallied in order to save life even with very limited resources. To witness that was very moving.’
The highlights of her time in the Autonomous Region of Bougainville were many, says Sarah – but she is particularly proud of the festivities for International Nurses Day in 2024, which the team had never celebrated before. ‘It was a joyous occasion,’ remembers Sarah. ‘And it led to some great collaboration between NZ and local police and the health sector: several visits to community services to raise community awareness of issues such as drug use and alcohol, training for security guards, basic first aid training…it was just wonderful, and showed we could work together.’ The collaboration Sarah witnessed between VSA and the New Zealand Police, which led to important community connections between Buin Health Centre and local police, was a key highlight.
Celebrating International Nurses Day 2024.
Sarah was also invited to a traditional naming ceremony by the Executive Director of Rural Health Services Buin, Cecilia Naguo. ‘We had developed a personal friendship as well as a professional one,’ she says. ‘I was very honoured to be invited to a naming ceremony where my name was swapped with her granddaughter. This was a very old custom – many of even the local people present had not witnessed it before.’ She hopes to return to Buin in the future to reconnect with the friends she made.
Sarah says she could not have had a more meaningful experience in the Autonomous Region of Bougainville. ‘It’s an incredible, beautiful place,’ she says. ‘I used to go for a walk every morning for at least an hour and the sunrises were spectacular – vast, beautiful colours that would just set you up for the day. The rains were equally as beautiful, thundering on a tin roof.’ She notes that the region has a rich and complex history and a wealth of crafts and skills: ‘There’s so much to interest you.’
A beautiful Buin sunrise on Sarah's last day.
Sarah hopes more people will consider a volunteering assignment in the Autonomous Region of Bougainville, as the people are incredibly friendly and welcoming. Even as a single white woman, she says she always felt safe. ‘There’s a real sense of community,’ she explains. ‘Church is really big and I decided early on that I would go every Sunday. It really helped with the language and I met so many people. They’d always notice if I wasn’t there.’
Overall, Sarah loved her time in the Autonomous Region of Bougainville. ‘I suppose it’s that thing everyone says about volunteering,’ she laughs. ‘I feel that I gained more than I left behind. It was a wonderful experience.’
Read more about the Autonomous Region of Bougainville here.
Browse our volunteering vacancies in the Autonomous Region of Bougainville here.