Tania Nugent: I've come back to my home town Port Moresby, the capital of Papua New Guinea, to spend time in a place most people associate with poverty, crime and despair.

Port Moresby's settlements cling to the hillsides of the Pacific's biggest city like dry shadows, with the rain falling and the sun shining on the other side of the slope. But out of those shadows the human spirit does shine. I've come to Kaugere settlement, where I literally lived on the other side of this hill -the sunny side of the slope, to meet a couple who raised their family here. And when they saw no hope, they created some - for theirs and all the settlement's children.

Peter Kailap: You know living up here life's pretty on the negative side.

Tania Nugent: Artist and musician Peter Kialap was born here. At age 51, he's seen the explosion of Port Moresby's 300,000 plus population - and its growing number of settlements.

Peter Kailap: They come from the village thinking they will get a better life but all they do is increase the number of people in their relatives' situation here .

Tania Nugent: Port Moresby was just a holiday stop over for his future wife Lydia from Australia, when they met at the hotel where Peter was working.

Lydia Kailap: I got to know that community here and I couldn't feel comfortable going back to Australia and living a comfortable life and having everything when all of my friends here had so little, so we decided to stay.

Tania Nugent: Lydia found herself living in one of Port Moresby's oldest and most infamous settlements.

Lydia Kailap: Rentals are so high there is absolutely no way that anyone can rent a home unless a company rents it or a government body rents it so they go and stay with relatives, and most of them are simply in settlements simply because they can't rent anywhere either, so that's how they grow, and there are thousands of people. There would be more people living in settlements in Port Moresby than living in suburban houses.

When we met, Peter had nine children and I had three children and then when we married we had two more little boys, so yeah, there is quite a tribe, fourteen.

Peter Kailap: Plus the rest in the community. We sort of struggled a lot of the time, and I thought if I was going to provide for my children, I may as well provide for the rest because they are basically the same as we are.

Tania Nugent: Peter the artist and musician and Lydia, a qualified chef and accountant suddenly became school teachers and founded the Children's University of Music and Arts. They started it with money from the sale of gift cards featuring Peter's art and opened it up for free to all the settlement's children.

Lydia Kailap: Starting the school was a lot to do with our own children because we found ourselves in a situation where we couldn't afford school fees either, so we said ok let's do it. So we just put a tarp down on the ground out here, none of this was here, in they came and away went.

Peter Kailap: It started with a handful. We had between 80 and 150 kids to start.

Tania Nugent: Since laying down the tarp in 2009 the school has more than doubled in size with more than 300 students.

Ludwina Oveng - teacher: I really wanted to volunteer and teach so in that way I would have some experiences, so maybe in the future I might teach the bigger schools.

Lydia Kailap: They don't have training, they don't have any formal qualifications. But they all volunteered and they knew that there wasn't going to be any pay.

Ludwina Oveng: I have the ages group I have is from 12 to 20 years old, and it looks like a lot of them needs help.

Lydia Kailap: Emotionally and psychologically the children have been damaged because of the level of violence that they live in. They're just subjected to verbal abuse, physical abuse witnessing extreme violence of one human being against another.

Being settlement people, they are ostracised from the rest of the community, they find it very difficult to get work when they say where they are from. Basically, they are like outcast. That of course sinks into the soul of the person if they are told it enough times, eventually they start believing it. We very quietly and consistently, try to make them see that they were born perfect like everyone else.

They don't have dreams, we have had to teach the children how to dream. First day of school this year, I had a class of 58 children aged between 9 and 13, and most of them had never been to school before, and I asked each of them what would like to be when you grow up, and they didn't have any answers. It was very heartbreaking to see that but it was very rewarding to see the results once they get going, let me tell you.

Peter Kailap: Yeah. I suppose it's the influence of a place that drives them into a place where they cannot dream for themselves. They cannot think beyond their own little box.

Tania Nugent: While reading writing and counting are all part of the teaching, there is a special focus here on music.

Peter Kailap: Being a musician I think there is potential in the people that their art, their creativity. They are very strong people. I think in the midst of pain where you got nothing, the best thing you got and the most valuable thing is your voice and when you sing, and the kids do that. The feeling just emotionally touches you and it's good.
We all have traumas in our life, and when you sing or listen to music or dance, something good happens inside you.

Tania Nugent: And the good vibes are flowing in to CUMA, fundraising from the Australian High Commission paid for the two classrooms and a commercial kitchen for the schools new catering business, an initiative to help fund the school into the future.

Carol Illa-Koivi - teacher: We need classrooms, we need books, we need library, good library, we need water, we need electricity. We need everything to help this school grow, because I think next it might go 2 times 300.

Tania Nugent: Do you know what you want to be when you grow up?

Student: Yes.

Tania Nugent: Tell me.

Student: Pilot.

Parent: When she comes home she tells us, "Mummy I'm happy to be in this school". (Translation)

Parent: All the parents here are happy to bring their children. If the children stay home and do nothing they'll go and steal and things. So we must bring out children to school. (Translation)

Peter Kailap: You have all the top criminals, they breed them here, and they work out of here which is what his place has had a name for and it's been ongoing, but since the school, it's sort of broken that cycle. They don't want their children to be like that.