Project Description:

In combination with my present training as an architect and my previous work in Kenya, I was asked to design a secondary girls boarding school to be built during the summer of 2007 in Muhuru Bay, Kenya.  This JJCF grant funds my summer work at the building site -- to coordinate local construction, material distribution and delivery (particularly the solar paneling), and further involve the community in the final details of the design.  In all these intentions, I am excited to use the Swahili and Luo language skills I acquired during my previous work in the area.

With the enthusiastic support of my architecture and structural engineering professors at Yale, I am designing the school, dorms, and complex (with a community motivated and sustainable agenda -- solar paneling, rain water catchment, ventilation, daylighting).  With the perspective I gained during my yearlong work in an informal settlement in Nairobi, Kenya, I hold tenaciously to the belief in education and the agency that it can inspire in daily decision making, especially for women.  I also am acutely aware of the strains of migration in cities like Nairobi with poorly distributed resources and the need for greater opportunities in rural areas, like Muhuru Bay where this secondary boarding school will be built.  I pair these beliefs with my own recent clarity as a future architect. Architecture has the capacity to transform the way a community views itself and organizes its resources.  Though greater infrastructure is not a solution in itself, I believe good design does make a difference, especially when its potential users are engaged in the process.

The school is a joint project between Duke University and Egerton University in Kenya, started through the collaboration of biology professors at both institutions.  Two Hundred and fifty fully funded female students will attend the school, a population incrementally reached over the next four years.  The website for the school is .