Conduit Collaborative

We’re excited to share that the YouthPromise Centre is nearing completion! ✨

It’s been a privilege to walk alongside YouthPromise Kenya to help envision and design a campus that will serve youth in rural communities through digital literacy and life-changing support.

The new centre will include space for computer training programs, women’s empowerment initiatives, classrooms, faith-based mentorship/guidance services, staff offices, and a cyber co-working hub for the community. 💻

We can’t wait to see the impact this space will have for generations to come.

We’re excited to share that Conduit Collaborative is growing! Please join us in welcoming Yordanos (Jordon) Tafesse to our team.

A graduate of the University of Gondar, brings a passion for design that serves communities most in need. Her professional journey has focused on organizations committed to creating meaningful change in underserved parts of the world — particularly through architecture that improves quality of life across Africa.

Her work and research span emergency architecture, colonial history, and project management, strengthening our mission to design with purpose and impact.

Outside the studio, you’ll find her reading and discussing theology and biblical history.

We’re grateful to have her perspective, heart, and expertise on the Conduit team. Welcome, Jordon!

✨ Impact Project Spotlight: Voices Awake Girls Academy ✨

We’re excited to share our master plan design for Voices Awake’s Girls Academy—a boarding high school for girls in Malawi.

The vision: to create one of the most inspiring and highest-quality schools in the country—a place where young women can learn, grow, and lead with confidence.

The campus is designed with:
🏫 Creative, collaborative academic spaces
🌿 Healthy, sustainable living environments
💡 Architecture that celebrates dignity and potential

More than a school, this project is a movement to transform futures for girls across Malawi.

We’re grateful to partner with in shaping a campus that will empower generations to come.

👉 Follow and visit voicesawake.org to support their vision.

Big things are happening at School in Addis Ababa!

Every day, the school serves two warm, nourishing meals to its students—but the current kitchen is small, relies on charcoal, and has no ventilation, making it tough and unhealthy for the amazing women who cook as they breathe in smoke.

That’s why we’re thrilled to break ground on a brand new kitchen building at Raey! 🙌 With high ceilings, louvered windows, a chimney system, better storage, and plenty of daylight, it will be a safer, cleaner, and more sustainable space for years to come.

This Impact Project will boost meal capacity, improve working conditions, and create a brighter future for students and staff alike.

(Scroll to the end to see a rendering of what the finished product will look like!)

Excitement is rising in Embu, Kenya! 🇰🇪✨

The YouthPromise Centre Kenya Training Center is coming to life—brick by brick—as Phase 3 of construction wraps up. With the walls and roof now in place, the team is preparing to launch the next phase: installing power and water infrastructure, doors, windows, and plaster.

This building represents more than just bricks and mortar. It’s a home for transformation—where rural youth will be equipped with digital and entrepreneurial skills that break cycles of poverty and create lasting opportunity.

We’re honored to partner with YouthPromise as their God-given vision for ministry takes shape. The impact ahead is real—and it’s just getting started.

🔗 Learn more about this Impact Project: conduitcollaborative.com/ourwork

We’re so excited to share photos of the completed Project Beteseb — our collaborative design-build effort from earlier this year! (Scroll back through our previous posts to see how the process came together.)

This multi-functional furniture prototype was built for Kokebe, a single mother, and her two young boys living in a 10ft x 12ft one-room house in a dense slum neighborhood of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Space is limited, but thoughtful design can make a big difference. We created a multi-functional furniture system to help maximize their small space. It includes:
– Two twin beds (one stowable and one lofted to open up floor space)
– A desk for the boys to do their homework
– Shelving for better storage

It’s a simple solution — but the smile on Kokebe’s face says everything. This gift of space, function, and beauty is truly a game changer for her family. (See the last picture for the “before” condition).

We’re deeply grateful for the chance to use our time and talents to serve those in need — to inspire, uplift, and help restore dignity through design. We hope to build more versions of these in the coming months for more families. Stay tuned!

Project Beteseb (Family): Finished Prototype

As we mentioned in our last post, this design-build project focused on how we could create a multifunctional piece of furniture to improve the lives of families living in slum neighborhoods in Addis Ababa.

The end product is a L-shaped bunk bed that allows for the lower bed to fold up create more open floor space in the home during the day, a small foldable desk for kids to do schoolwork, and a storage shelf to help with organizing belongings.

Although simple, each of these elements offer huge improvements to the living spaces that most families in this community have.

As you can see by the huge smiles on and ‘s faces, our team is incredibly proud of this work and is excited to gift this prototype to a family.

Stay tuned for our next post that will show the finished work in the home of our friend Kokabe.

The last three days we worked on building a prototype of a multifunctional furniture design to improve the lives of families that live In the slum neighborhoods surrounding our client (a nonprofit school in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia). Many of these families consist of single moms and their children. They often live in 1 room 10’x12’ shelters made of tree branches, corrugated sheet metal, and plastic tarps (often with dirt floors).

We call this project “Beteseb”. “Beteseb” means “family” in Amharic (one of the languages widely spoken in Ethiopia).

We have been dreaming about ways that we could improve the living situation for families that live in these conditions. Unfortunately, if we make any improvements to their homes, their landlords will raise the rent and they will be forced to move.

So as a team, we decided to design a multifunctional piece of furniture that would help them improve and maximize their living space. This way if/when the family ever needs to move, they can take this furniture piece with them.

Check out this group of photos from the past few days. It was amazing to see our team work together on the build and to grow as architects through the process of building something that we designed.

We’ll do another post with the finished product soon.

Today we had a Conduit staff retreat for our staff and their spouses. It was a fun day full of good food, inspiring architecture, friendly competition 😎, and enjoying God‘s incredible creation.

I am humbled and incredibly grateful to work with and every day and look forward to all of the incredible things that are in store for 2025 and beyond!

We spent the day visiting to potential hospital sites for one of our clients!

It was so fun to evaluate their facilities under construction and dream with them about potential partnerships with our client, and how they could together help, save, or improve the lives of countless Ethiopians.

The last few days I got to visit the ongoing construction of the training center on YouthPromise Kenya’s campus.

Construction of phase two (walls columns and upper floor slab) is underway and turning out very well so far. Check out the captions and follow along for more details and updates.

Again, we are humbled and blessed to work with such an amazing team of professionals on such an important project.

architectural

Kenya Trip update:
I am here in Embu, Kenya this week visiting two of our impact project sites. (YouthPromise Kenya and Family Worship Church.)

Here are a few of the renderings of the church design and some pictures of the time that I got to spend with Family Worship Church on the land where they will build this new church.

We are so humbled and blessed to be able to partner with such an incredible church and provide them with high-quality and very affordable architectural design services.