Since January 2008, Build Change has been working in West Sumatra, Indonesia with homeowners who lost their houses in earthquakes in March 2007.

Build Change's Indonesian staff, who are full-time in the villages, provide design inputs, assistance with quantity estimating and materials selection, and hands-on construction training directly to homeowners and builders. Homeowners receive a small grant from the Indonesian government, and with Build Change inputs, they choose the structure type, materials, architecture, and layout that is appropriate for their family and budget. Homeowners build themselves or hire local builders. Build Change is not providing any funds or materials to the homeowners; only technical assistance and training.

This high impact, low cost approach has already resulted in 261 families who are building back better. 79% or 205 families are meeting or exceeding minimum standards for earthquake-resistance.

• 32% are rebuilding with timber. 95% of those 84 families are meeting or exceeding minimum standards
• the other 68% of the 261 families are rebuilding with confined masonry. 71% of those 177 families are meeting or exceeding minimum standards.

Visit our Technical Resources page for examples of design drawings, simple construction booklet for homeowners, and posters. Check back regularly for updates about this exciting, homeowner-driven program.

Build Change's West Sumatra program is funded by the Kingdom Foundation.

June 30, 2008: Reconnaissance to Sichuan
Build Change's Founder, Dr. Elizabeth Hausler, visited the earthquake-affected area to understand why buildings failed and make plans to support earthquake-resistant housing reconstruction. Using unconfined precast concrete plank floors on top of unreinforced masonry walls caused most of the devastation (foreground in photo below), but some confined masonry buildings performed flawlessly (background).

Visit the Technical Resources page under post-earthquake recon reports for more information, and support the homeowners to rebuild earthquake-resistant houses so they never have to face such tragedy again. DONATE NOW

May 12, 2008: Devastation in China
69,185 killed. 374,171 injured. 18,467 missing. More than 7.79 million houses destroyed and 24.5 million damaged. 5 million homeless, and 10 million now living below the poverty line after a M7.9 earthquake.

January 28, 2008 : On Video!
Elizabeth Hausler explains to Global X that she was finishing her Ph.D. in engineering at Berkeley when an earthquake hit India and killed 20,000 people. That's when she realized that "it's not the earthquake that kills people, it's the building collapsing."

See the video.