Interdisciplinary
A Children’s Village in eSwatini: INSTABA Project By Andrew von Maur, MArch, BArch ‘99
Professor, School of Architecture & Interior Design
Health Assessment Overview By Padma Tadi-Uppala, PhD, MPH
Professor, School of Population Health, Nutrition & Wellness
Students and faculty in the 2019 Urban Design Studio graduate course were honored to work with Saving Orphans through Healthcare and Outreach (SOHO) to complete preliminary plans for a Children’s Village in the mountains of eSwatini, formerly known as Swaziland. The small southern African country struggles with poverty and the highest HIV infection rate in the world, leaving about one quarter of the population as orphans and vulnerable children (OVCs). SOHO is a non-profit organization dedicated to serving these OVCs through hopefilled, holistic, Christ-centered programs. The SOHO Children’s Village will be a new home for up to 250 OVCs for whom no other placement option can be found. Based on Seventh-day Adventist models of education, the project plans to meet the physical, mental, social, and spiritual needs of the children in a complete village featuring housing, a school and arts center, a church, a small clinic, workshops for skill training, agricultural areas, and various supporting services and caretaker facilities. Called INTSABA, which means “mountain top” in the local language, the project is located on a 1,075-acre mountain farm with plenty of water and a climate conducive to growing avocado, macadamia nuts, citrus, and various other fruits and vegetables. God led SOHO to this land, where the previous Sabbath-keeping owners had prepared a mountain farm with commercial fencing protecting the whole property. The beautiful site will support a small game lodge, which will help to financially sustain the Children’s Village. The design of the village and its buildings is inspired by local Swazi homestead traditions, will be supported by sustainable infrastructure, and is intentionally designed to 4 / The Pulse 2021
help uplift the surrounding local community through its various spaces, facilities, and programs. In September 2019, Professors Andrew von Maur, Christopher Perry, and Troy Homenchuk led fourteen international graduate architecture students to visit eSwatini and conduct a two-week participatory design process with local stakeholders and OVCs. They were joined by Marcelle Thomas-Richardson, then a Master of Public Health student (MPH ‘20), under the mentorship of Padma Uppala. This collaboration with the School of Population Health, Nutrition & Wellness was established to inform the preliminary plans for the SOHO Children’s Village from a public health perspective. ThomasRichardson and Uppala worked to determine the needs of OVCs in eSwatini and prepare a whole health assessment and a strategy for providing services to meet those needs. https:// www.andrews.edu/chhs/files/eswatini-summary-report.pdf Besides the work pertaining to project planning, the students also raised money to locally purchase new shoes, raincoats, and undergarments for over 120 OVCs in a local informal settlement. God also opened the door for our team to help start a new vegetable garden there. A final report was prepared in December for the use of SOHO to help with consolidating support and project fundraising. SOHO advisor Tom Chittick, retired Andrews University (AU) professor of agriculture, has since traveled to eSwatini to begin the early phases of implementation on the ground. SOHO also plans to work with AU architecture alumnus Wandile Mthiyane and his South Africa-based Ubuntu Design Group on future architectural development. To learn more about SOHO and for a brief summary of the current project status, visit http://saving-orphans.org/intsabafarm/. In January 2020, the project was featured on the 3ABN Today television program with a one-hour interview that included Professor Andrew von Maur and students Stephanie Davis and Gwen Albright Ndikumagenge.
