Africa Renewal University, ARU (formerly Gaba Bible Institute), is a Christian University in Uganda, who are becoming one of seven accredited universities in the country. Their primary focus is “Equipping Christian leaders in Africa for the transformation of society.” ARU is a Ugandan founded and run university with one fulltime missionary from the states.
see ARU (GBI's) Facebook page or http://www.gbiuganda.org/ for more info.
EMI Team
ARU has recently purchased new property in Buloba, Uganda. There are current buildings have a capacity of 300 students, and ARU is looking in the future to have upwards of 700 students. That is where EMI comes in as a supporting ministry. Our team of 10 Architects and Civil Engineers (among other disciplines) flew over for two weeks to complete a master site plan for the expansion of this campus. This included two more “campuses” of classrooms, an administration building, a chapel, staff housing, a football pitch (soccer field), and a library.
Master Plan (White buildings are existing)
Perspective Rendering
Engineers: Mike, Rhet, and Jonathan at work
"Electrical Hub"
Rhet and I working some Civil details
It’s crazy, we basically get about 6 months of architecture and engineering done in a week and a half. So the majority of our time is spent in some kind of makeshift office (in a third world country) designing and calculating a master plan and civil details.
Me, Phil, and Ben (volunteer) doing percolation tests.
The work that Phil (the other intern) and I did was usually less specific, and more of a supporting role to the design professionals. We did some water testing in the area, percolation tests (for septic leach pits), some final surveying of the site, and other odds and ends jobs. One main job of ours was to make sure we understood everyone’s part so that, when we came back to Colorado Springs to finalized and compile everyone’s work, we would have a good idea of what they were doing.
Brad (project leader) at the final presenation
At the end of our time there, we have a large presentation to the university board, to present our design to them. Throughout the design, we only had one contact from the board, Jeff, and he was the one American missionary. So going into the presentation, we were a little nervous that everyone may not be on board with our design. But thankfully, Jeff had done a great job portraying the needs of the university to us, and our professionals did a great job designing to fulfill those needs.
So now, two months after the trip, our project is in the final stages and we should start publishing next week. The grand opening of the new site was on April 7th and ARU has already started to take steps toward our design. The well was drilled, grading of the site was started, the new kitchen was being finished and the latrines for the dormitories are in progress.
