SCALEAfrica: Side project to life mission

By Murrye Bernard

Photo courtesy SCALEAfrica

McGurn and students and teachers from the Chiutika Basic School, in Zambia.

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Many emerging professionals moonlight, but Erinn McGurn’s side project, a nonprofit organization dedicated to building sustainable schools in Africa, became her full-time focus. For four years, McGurn spent evenings and weekends — outside her position as director of a high-end residential firm in New York City — designing and establishing a support base to fund projects that are transforming lives.

In 2005, McGurn and her husband, Guy, who is originally from Zimbabwe, traveled to Mfuwe, Zambia, for a safari. They hoped to visit a local community, and their lodge staff directed them to nearby Chiutika Basic School. The primary school was underfunded and overcrowded, and the headmaster faced the challenge of educating without basics such as desks, chalkboards, and textbooks. After returning home, the McGurns sent books to fulfill the headmaster’s single request and continued to exchange letters. Word reached them that a storm had destroyed the school’s roof, and it was “no longer an abstract issue halfway around the world, but an event that impacted people we had come to know.” The couple returned to Mfuwe in 2006, and shortly after, SCALEAfrica was formed.   Since SCALEAfrica’s work is funded entirely from private donations, each day Erinn switched gears from catering to wealthy clients, and perfected her marketing and fund-raising skills. She prioritized a series of multiphased projects to restore the school’s roof, add a new classroom block and Life Skills Workshop, and provide basic educational materials including desks. These steps are complete, and next on the horizon is improved sanitation and teacher housing. McGurn completed all design and construction documents, and she ensured that the school was affordable by incorporating sustainable strategies, including local labor and building materials, passive solar techniques, and natural ventilation. SCALEAfrica carefully navigated local politics while maintaining sensitivity to traditions and community feedback. “You have to be respectful and leave Western expectations out of it,” McGurn insists. She worked closely with officials to secure approvals from the Ministry of Education, and the project received a blessing from the chief of the Kunda tribe. McGurn recently left the demands of high-end residential design to concentrate on SCALEAfrica. Now a licensed architect, she also opened her own revenue-generating office, SCALEStudio, through which she completes sustainable renovation projects, and she plans to tackle similar school projects and housing in Haiti. Fittingly, the name SCALE originated from the desire to create a scalable model for sustainable design that could be successfully re-created in a variety of locations. “People feel they have to do something grand for it to matter,” says McGurn, “but the gesture can be as simple as sending a dictionary or building a few extra classrooms. Through this process, I learned the lesson about how you give versus what you give, and it’s really only about the how.” 

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