The plan to establish Neema on its own, permanent campus has been a long project in the making. Neema first started as a day school teaching the tailoring trade. But then in 2014, we saw the need to welcome our most vulnerable students to stay onsite at Neema rather than commute. So we expanded the building we were using for skills training, which was located on a shared compound, to accommodate for this. Then in 2017, we pivoted into a full boarding school, and rented out an additional house in the same village to house more vulnerable young women and their children while they acquired the skills they needed to be self-sufficient. During this time, we had two locations — the first a combined residential and teaching location where students with children stayed, and the second a residential-only location from which the rest of the students walked to and from the teaching location.

But by 2018, the need to have one campus — a single site where all residential and teaching buildings could be located — became more acute. We, therefore, approached two teams of Villanova University students — Imani Design and Consulting (2018) and Jiwe Engineering (2019) — for their technical and engineering expertise to understand how to even start such a project. By the Fall of 2019, following on the work of these two teams, Neema was able to collaborate with InNOVAtion 一 a team of students Civil Engineers from Villanova University working under the supervision of Dr. Virginia Smith一 to begin the process of getting detailed design ideas for a new, potential “Neema campus,” as well as estimated material and building costs.

To do this, the InNOVAtion team traveled to Neema in February 2020 to meet with our Kenyan team and students. While there, they also visited other organizations with similar campuses and went into local hardware stores and building material suppliers to get a sense of material availability and costs. And then in the fall of 2020, they presented their final report to the Neema US team.

By then, because of COVID, Neema moved out of its shared compound, relocated all the students and their children on one “campus,” and built makeshift classrooms to accommodate. While this new, rented, make-do campus wasn’t ideal, it made us realize 1) how beneficial it is to have all the students and their children in the same location, and 2) how critical it is to have dedicated space for childcare, counseling, and discipleship. Having been fortunate to raise enough money by the end of 2020 to purchase our own land, we started looking. And then in 2021, thanks to the collaboration with the son of our current landlord (the former Village Chief), we identified a plot of land for sale and purchased two acres. God has answered our prayer, and we are so grateful that with the purchase of the land, we are one step closer towards building an all-inclusive residential and teaching campus for Neema.

Although the InNOVAtion team was not involved in finding our new campus location or creating our final design, they were integral in establishing a concept for a school building that would maintain Kenyan cultural standards throughout the campus. And so, the Neema Land Building Committee used the InNOVAtion groundwork plan as a basis for early discussions. We also conducted a needs assessment among our Kenyan colleagues to refine our campus design. They are excited about being able to have more space to welcome more women in the program, a large room to hold worship and workshops with the community, a water well to secure access to water for Neema and its surrounding families, and land to farm Neema’s own crops and eventually raise chickens or cows! The final design of our campus integrates all of these inputs.

Our desire to double Neema’s impact could not be achieved without all of the people who have committed their time and resources to help us deliver on the mission God has entrusted us with.

Neema Land Building Committee:

Brian McIntire – Board Chair, Rita Schaer – Board VP, BettieAnn Brigham – Board Member, Gaëlle Beltran-Grémaud – Executive Director, John Harper – Advisor, Tony Kalume – Advisor, Ben Horning – Advisor

From Here to There - A Collaborative Process