The Program

One Acre Fund is an organization that helps East African farmers grow their way out of hunger.  With hope to expand their operation from the current enrollment of 12,000 families to 33,000 families in the next two years, they are building a main headquarters campus in Bungoma, Kenya.  This campus will include a main building with administration, classrooms and support rooms, as well as housing for staff.  There will be five two bedroom houses with cooking and living amenities for in-country volunteers.

Climate:

Located directly on the equator, at an altitude of nearly 1400m, Bungoma experiences an average rainfall of 127mm per month with average temperatures falling near 22ºC.

Sun path diagram

Solar energy and surface meteorology

Variable	I	II	III	IV	V	VI	VII	VIII	IX	X	XI	XII
Insolation, kWh/m²/day	5.94	6.37	6.21	5.70	5.60	5.21	5.10	5.45	6.16	5.82	5.40	5.66
Clearness, 0 - 1	0.60	0.62	0.59	0.56	0.58	0.55	0.54	0.55	0.60	0.57	0.54	0.58
Temperature, °C	23.06	24.03	24.44	23.70	23.08	22.07	21.63	21.69	22.59	22.92	22.27	22.27
Wind speed, m/s	4.39	4.52	4.42	4.29	4.39	4.32	4.31	4.29	4.34	4.27	4.22	4.19
Precipitation, mm	54	80	124	230	241	143	118	145	136	144	135	68
Wet days, d	9.1	11.1	14.0	20.0	20.7	15.2	15.6	16.7	16.6	17.4	16.6	10.7

This data was obtained from the NASA Langley Research Center Atmospheric Science Data Center; New et al. 2002

Other Considerations:

As forced entry is not uncommon, each house must be secure.  Also, available and local building materials are a large driver in the design.  The site has some noise issues "...chiefly chickens and church bells", so we've done our best to reduce sound transmission through the outer walls.