CS07__eMi Kobwin Children’s Center [Kobwin District, Uganda, East Africa]

In Northern Uganda, a conflict has raged on for nearly two decades with relatively very little attention or concern from the rest of the world; the Lord’s Resistance Army has waged terror and war in this land with its kidnapped child soldiers. Some of these children are able to escape or be taken back by the government troops, but special care and attention must be given to these children before they are to become a normal, contributing part of their communities again.

New Hope Uganda [NHU] is a ministry that is establishing a campus to specifically tend to the needs of these affected children. NHU approached the eMi office in Kampala, Uganda, to design the master plan for this campus on a 55-acre site. Largely modeled on NHU’s campus at Kasana, the designers adapted the special sectors of the program that called for intense counseling of the newly arrived children with the unique features of the site, using natural outdoor enclosures found among the large rock outcroppings to promote safe environments away from the perimeter. The rest of the site was designed to adapt the program of village pods and their surrounding land for agricultural cultivation as well as the education components that included a primary school and vocational school. NHU and the designers wished to draw from some of the indigenous building forms and materials, as to eliminate any institutional feel.

Currently, funds are being raised to undergo full-time building operations and some first-phase roads and buildings have been staked out.

Sources:

www.emiea.org/
www.emiea.org/projects/archive/index.php?num=9027

[Image provided by www.emiea.org]