AINA's Children's Home is somehow a self contained village: it includes, on one side, several buildings built around a large central tree lined area and on the other side a small farm (shamba) aimed at providing  - in the long term - food for all the children and the inhabitants of the village.
The buildings of the Nursery (for children from 0 to 5 years), the dormitory (for older children), the kitchen with the canteen, a building used to house the volunteers and the administrative offices are dislocated in a circular shape developed around the central courtyard. The circle is closed by a large raised platform for games and entertainment: a sort of “piazza” in the center of the village.

The shamba (the farm) extends beyond the residential area. The stream that provides some of the village's water  and passes through its land, flows at the end of a gentle slope.
The shamba does not for the moment provide us with the possibility of total self sufficiency but we are trying to work towards this goal: a recent visit of an Italian agronomist made it possible to optimize some cultures and to begin the experimental cultivation of courgettes, broccoli and peas.
Up until now we have been growing cabbages, sukumawikis, carrots, corn, banana, mango, avocado and other traditional African vegetables and fruits. Although for the time being the shamba provides only 25% of the needs of the village, our long-term objective is to buy less and less outside ....

In addition to the products of the kitchen garden, we have chickens, rabbits, goats and cows. Our six cows were recently traded for two better cows which can produce plenty of milk: we hope to be able to buy more cows soon, so as not to need to buy milk from the market. There is also a donkey who was extremely useful during the construction phase: he was and still is essential in order to draw up water from the stream when the water system has failed.

Twenty-five people, employees of the village, work in the shamba.
It is clear that the life and the productivity of shamba are strongly linked to the availability of water. For gardening we use a simple irrigation system that brings water from the well: it pumps up, thanks to a basic filtering system, the water from the stream that flows through the shamba. For the village, instead, we use the water that comes from a source located a few miles away, beyond the forest. The water arrives through the water system that we built already in 2009 and that allows also the local community to draw water at the fountains placed along the route of the pipeline.