Sacred ground: how Papua New Guinea shaped a lifetime of giving

For Chris James and Laurie O’Keefe, Papua New Guinea isn’t just a place – it’s a kind of sacred ground, the stepping off point of their adult lives.

Chris arrived in Dogura (Papua) in 1966 as an 18-year-old volunteer teacher, fresh out of high school.

Laurie’s journey began a few years later, in the early 1970s, when he took up a position as a newly qualified accountant with the Catholic Mission in Vunapope (East New Britain).

“In PNG, I met volunteers from all around the world, as well as local people from the Mengen community,” he recalls. “It was quite an astonishing pool of people, amazingly close-knit. I really blossomed in that atmosphere.”

Chris and Laurie didn’t cross paths in PNG. That came later, back in Australia. By then they were in their 30s and building purposeful careers – Chris in health care, Laurie in finance. Before long, they were trading stories of Dogura and Vunapope, cementing the bond that would become a lifelong relationship.

When care met courage and forged a lasting connection

In the 1980s, their worldview was forever changed by the HIV/AIDS crisis. Chris worked on the frontlines with a volunteer health service for gay men in the Geelong area and, together, the couple made frequent visits to see friends at Fairfield Hospital, the designated care centre for Victoria’s AIDS patients and the homebase of Burnet’s efforts to help contain the HIV virus.

“That’s how we first became aware of Burnet,” says Chris.

“They had the great intelligence to actually go and talk to the men in the saunas and the gay clubs, to people who were injecting drugs, to women working in brothels. They then developed education and service delivery programs targeted to these communities. That really appealed to us.”

The couple became regular donors to Burnet in the early 2000s. They then stepped up their support in 2015 with the launch of Healthy Mothers Healthy Babies in PNG – a program aiming to define the major causes of poor maternal, newborn, and child health and that resonated with their shared history, and with Chris’s background in general and obstetric nursing.

Choosing to give now, to see changes made

When it came time to update their Wills, they included a bequest to Burnet. But Laurie, ever the accountant, saw an opportunity to do more now.

“I thought, rather than waiting until we’ve died, in addition to the gift we have left in our Wills, why not start something while we’re still here to see it?”

And so, they established the James O’Keefe Fund for PNG, a gift that would be permanently invested by Burnet with the returns going toward its life-saving work. They began with a $20,000 donation and have added to it each year since.

By 2024, the fund had grown large enough for the annual returns to be directed towards a PNG program tackling child growth failure or ‘stunting’ through family education and support. It’s exactly the kind of work Chris and Laurie believe in – practical, grounded in research, and built on real relationships with the people it’s meant to help.

“I’ve worked in health care all my life,” says Chris, “first as a nurse, then as a community health care worker, and finally as a psychologist.”

Chris and Laurie’s endowment fund now exceeds $50,000 – and it’s still growing.

“If our contribution is part of something bigger, something that leads to long-term improvements in communities, that will be just wonderful.” said Chris.