A couple of months ago a group of men from the Kogoraipa group of churches in the Yagaria came to see me. They had formed a support group to raise money to support the missionaries the church has sent out to other parts of PNG. They told me that had received training in growing potatoes and would be growing them and selling seed potatoes to a local company. They felt that this avenue would not generate enough income and so they wanted help to buy able to buy laptop computers from overseas which they could sell and use the profit to support the missionaries. They are conscious that many of the young people now are wanting laptops for university and some even for the senior years of high school.
After talking with them about what we would need in order to be able to access the internet and the sort of bank account/s we would need, I sought help from Chris in out IT department. Chris told me about Shipito a company in the US which has been set up to post parcels [packages] around the world from the US because so many companies in the US [if not all] which sell on the internet will not post to a destination outside the U.S. :(
Chris sent me the following toksave concerning Shipito.com
NTM PNG ICT Dept has setup an account with Shipito.com, and has
used it many times for multiple purposes and highly recommends
this service. Shipito provides each registered account with a
Torrance California mailing address. With this address, you are
then free to shop at any online retailer that ships within the US,
including Ebay, Amazon.com, NewEgg, TigerDirect etc... You, or
your organization would then prepay for postage at your
discretion. Their rates are pretty straightforward, it costs a
flat rate of $8.00 per parcel plus the actual shipping cost for
each parcel to ship it to any address overseas. (We've opted to
pay a premium which has brought our processing fee down to $2.50
for each parcel) Since many items such as laptops are often nearly
half the price for the same items in Australia, and often 3 time
cheaper than the same items in PNG, we've found significant costs
savings using this service.
Whenever a parcel for your account arrives at their receiving
center in Torrance California, they notify you by email, then
after logging into your account, you'll have a range of options in
how to send the parcel including:
- A range of airfreight services including DHL, Federal Express,
Airborne etc
- Options to consolidate the package with other orders to save
on shipping costs (small fee applies)
- Options to discard excess packaging again to save shipping
costs (small fee applies)
- You'll receive a picture of every package that arrives
- You'll receive freight tracking numbers for each item that
arrives
- You'll have an option to have Shipito open your package and
take pictures for you to assess whether everything ordered has
arrived (small fee applies)
- You'll have the opportunity to fill out the customs form for
each parcel, designating it's contents & commercial value.
(required for each parcel)
- With each parcel that arrives at Shipito's receiving center,
they will also provide you with the shipping volume and weight
automatically, and free of charge.
- Additionally, Shipito also offers an assisted purchasing
service for both online retailers as well as brick & mortar
retail stores such Walmart, Home Depot etc. This especially
makes it easy to shop via email asking Shipito to source
whatever you're needing. (fee applies)
In order to setup an account with Shipito, they will require
passport details, billing details (bank account, Paypal account or
credit card etc), there also is a form you'll need to fill out and
have notarized including another form to be notarized by your local
post office verifying that your identity as the receiver at your
given address(s)
For more information, go to
www.shipito.com
One each parcel has been shipped, again you'll be notified via
email.
He also suggested that a smart phone would be a better option than the 10.1" laptop I had suggested to the men for them to connect to the internet via the Digicel tower which they can access from their village. Chris also recommended a solar charging panel which they could use in the village to charge their phone.
In my next post I'll share the difficulties I experienced with setting up the Shipito account so that you will be able to learn from my experience and avod the pitfalls.
Then I'll share about our first successful shipment containing a 10.1" laptop, a smart phone and the solar charging panel. I will also fill you in on the progress concerning setting up a bank account for the group and getting a Visa debit card. Em inap long dispela taim.
