Sek Sak Light Church is a community church congregation made up of local villagers. Every Sunday, the villagers meet for bible study training, distribute rice to the poor, & share meals together. The congregation consists of 13 adults and 10 kids, but hosts regular gatherings of up to 100 people every third Sunday, where they also distribute food to other villagers and share meals together.
The Church does not have a permanent church building, meeting only on vacant land with chairs & makeshift shelters unprotected from the harsh year-round tropical heat or monsoon rains. Despite this, the Church continues to meet & provide support to other villagers every Sunday.
Grace, an Australian missionary, is a strong supporter of the community & is leading the effort to establish a formal congregation space for the Church on a small plot of land donated by one of the Church members.
Grace's vision is to develop the site to finally provide a sheltered meeting space for the Church, as well as basic amenities such as toilets and clean water. The new church building will also act as a central community hub for the area, through which the Church can provide essential services for locals, such as food storage & distribution, medical treatment, education & accommodation for local and international visitors.
VIGILANTI provided pro-bono design services to develop a design to realise Grace's vision & to support her fundraising for this impactful project.
Through our conversations with Grace, we were able to understand that the villagers didn't just need a simple Church building. This is a once-in-a-lifetiime opportunity for the village & the valuable land that was gifted must be as multi-functional as possible to provide the essential services the village needs.
Due to the remote location of Sek Sak, there is also limited access to building technology and materials. Villagers and local labourers are only equipped with basic construction skills & only have access to natural materials, such as bamboo and earth, & recycled materials. With limited access to electricity, the design must also be able to cool & thermoregulate passively in a tropical, humid climate like Cambodia.
It was clear that we needed to accommodate alot on this tiny parcel of land, & maximise what it can deliver for the villagers, but we were able to achieve through an innovative design that, once realised, will provide:
Our design plans was used by Grace to approach international funders & helped her secure:
The project has successfully been completed under an altered construction methodology.
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