I spent the this week living with the organization leaders of Shishya and orphans in the Indian town of Sailakui. What started as 20 acres of rocky, desolate soil, has now grown into a school for 400 children, a large agricultural farm, and a community of families for orphans and boys from a leprosy background. Our team sought to understand how they live and work in this space in order to develop a long term master plan for their organization. During our time there, I facilitated the master plan design, developed the schematic design for the school, and oversaw our team's creation of our graphic package for the client. 

Project Background:

Established in 1978, Shishya Campus began operating in the town of Sailakui under the leadership of Ken and Frieda McCrae. The goal of Shishya Campus was to provide a home for orphaned children and serve the surrounding community. For the past 3 decades this organization has grown and expanded to include Shishya School (providing high quality and state ranked education), which serves children from the surrounding villages in additon to the children living on campus. 

Currently the campus includes: children’s homes, staff residence, farmland, and the Shishya School. The organization is seeking to grow and move from what was a “single family” to a “community of families”. In addition to expanding and improving the current ministries of Shishya campus, the leadership foresees extending its outreach through a retreat center, homes for widows with AIDS, and an community institute. In particular, the success of Shishya School necessitates a new school complex to accommodate the growing enrollment, projected at 900 students, this will effectively double the current enrollment of 450 students. This new school complex will include a new junior school, an administrative building, and an auditorium.