Kick 4 Life is a charity delivering a range of projects focused on tackling HIV through sports-based health education, voluntary testing, life-skills development and support into education and employment. Its work is focused in Lesotho which has the third highest HIV prevalence in the world and where more than 100,000 children have been orphaned by the disease.
This year Penoyre & Prasad have provided voluntary architectural services to help design and build a new conference and accommodation centre, including new Kick 4 Life offices, in Maseru, Lesotho
The new centre will enable the charity to expand its youth programmes, offering residential schemes which will allow children from even remote areas to participate. The new centre will also facilitate revenue generating schemes, with rentable meeting spaces and conference rooms and a new social enterprise café, which will provide training for, and be run by, street kids.
This project consolidates development work undertaken previously on the site, as part of FIFA’s 20 Centres for 2010 Campaign which aimed to create 20 Football for Hope Centres promoting public health, education and football in disadvantaged communities across Africa.
As a strategy to accommodate any future funding gaps, the new centre, will be built in two stages. Sleeping accommodation, not immediately required, will be located on the first floor and independently accessible during the second stage of construction. Design features include flexible partitions between conference rooms, a timber pergola to the west for shading of ground floor and to create a community space to the café and a “sunset balcony” on the first floor common room.
Penoyre & Prasad architect Pedro Clarke, who has long standing connections with Kick 4 Life, has worked on the project this year, developing the design to hand over to a local architect for implementation. Pedro is the latest Penoyre & Prasad architect to work in Lesotho. Partner Ian Goodfellow also volunteered via Article 25 to work on projects in the region, helping develop a special needs school in Lesotho in 2008.
Kick4Life is developing a growing range of social enterprise activities which offer participants the opportunity to gain valuable experience, as well as generating sustainable income for ongoing programme delivery
www.kick4life.org