BUILD CHANGE
BUILD Disaster-Resistant Buildings | CHANGE Construction Practices Permanently
Programs and results
What we aim to solve
By 2030, it is estimated that three billion people – about 40% of the world’s population – will lack access to adequate housing. Inadequate or substandard housing is particularly vulnerable to earthquakes and climate-related disasters and disproportionately inhabited by economically disadvantaged and underserved populations. With the intensity and frequency of climate hazards such as hurricanes, fires, and floods increasing, the need for resilient housing is more urgent than ever. There are many obstacles that prevent people from living in a safe, resilient home – this may include, for example, public policy and funding, access to information and affordable finance, or access to appropriate technology and technical assistance. Build Change works with homeowners, governments, and financial institutions to overcome these obstacles in order to ensure that everyone lives in a safe, healthy, resilient home that can withstand future threats.
Our programs
What are the organization's current programs, how do they measure success, and who do the programs serve?
Indonesia: Post-disaster and Prevention
Indonesia is one of the most disaster-prone areas in the world, yet there is very little training and education about disaster-resistant design and construction. Build Change is retrofitting homes and schools across the country while promoting safe construction, and providing design assistance, construction supervision, and training programs for builders and homeowners.
Build Change has worked in Indonesia since 2004. To date, we've made 23,000+ buildings safer for 122,000+ people, trained16,000+ people & created over 3,000 jobs.
-Working in partnership with microfinance organizations, we're helping hundreds of low-income women to access affordable loans for home strengthening.
-Following the Cianjur earthquake in November 2022 we've startedd retroftting schools in the hope that others will follow.
-Our Better Building Materials (BBM) program has supported hundreds of brickmakers in Sumatra to streamline their business practices and improve the quality of the bricks they produce.
Haiti: Post-disaster and Prevention
Build Change is working with homeowners, builders, and block makers in Les Cayes following a 7.2-magnitude earthquake in August 2021 which killed 2,000+ people & damaged or destroyed 130,000+ homes.
Our 100% local team is supporting earthquake survivors to repair and rebuild permanently by providing them with conditional cash grants & technical assistance, while training builders in seismic-material construction and local block makers in high-quality block production.
Jobs and better building materials are key to long-term economic recovery in Haiti. Our work there since 2010 has enabled over 3,600 households to rebuild or retrofit their homes for disaster resilience and made 8,000+ people safer, while creating almost 10,000 jobs and training 12,000+ people.
Additionally, Build Change supported the government to develop the National Retrofit Guidelines, which are promoted as the new standard for making safer buildings.
Learn more at https://buildchange.org/locations/haiti/
Philippines: Post-disaster and Prevention
Build Change is responding following the July 27 2022 Luzon earthquake to quickly support families in the north with safe, permanent repair and retrofitting solutions to accelerate their long-term recovery.
Build Change is the first and only organization with a systems change solution supporting the reconstruction and strengthening of existing houses and schools across the Philippines. Since 2014, Build Change has:
-Implemented engineering, technology & lending solutions to design, build & finance 4,000 safer buildings to make almost 44,000 people safer
-Facilitated behavioral change by training over 5,000 people in safe construction practices & created 600 jobs
-Spearheaded a prevention-oriented, private sector-led model that enables low-income homeowners to self-finance quality structural & habitability upgrades.
-Built credibility and influence at all levels across 18 organizations including local government, financial service providers, and the Philippines Red Cross.
Colombia: Disaster Prevention
Over 70% of Colombians live in informal housing that is structurally inadequate and vulnerable to even moderate earthquakes.
Build Change has worked in Colombia since 2012 to demonstrate the opportunity for strengthening existing vulnerable housing to save lives and reduce economic losses, while simultaneously improving living conditions for the most vulnerable. We have worked with national and local governments to create the necessary policy, economic, and technical conditions to implement resilient housing programs at scale. The work of Build Change and its partners has leveraged $1 billion in public investment for resilient housing programs through national and city-wide initiatives, with thousands of housing upgrades underway.
Build Change continues to work with national and local governments to advocate for further necessary policy change, support more structurally ambitious home improvement work, and ensure programs are accessible to the people who need them most.
Nepal: Post-disaster and Prevention
After the 2015 Gorkha earthquake, Build Change's innovation in engineering and technical resource development enabled post-disaster structural retrofitting of rural homes at a national scale for approximately 15% of the cost of replacing them.
Build Change worked closely with the government to develop policy and implementation solutions for overcoming some of the major challenges to the overall reconstruction process. We implemented large-scale technical assistance and training programs, developed a remote support app for homeowners and construction workers, built demonstration houses and retrofits, and supported building code advancements. By 2018, Build Change and its partners were operating a network of 20+ Technical Support Centers providing free advice, free designs, and free site supervision support to over 20,000 homeowners, across multiple earthquake-affected districts, with a system aimed at capacitating 3,000+ government site inspectors.
Guatemala: Post-Disaster and Climate-Change Adaptation
Following the 2012 earthquake, Build Change has been working in Guatemala to promote structural retrofitting of vulnerable housing to withstand future earthquakes and climate hazards while simultaneously making essential improvements to improve living conditions. In 2014, Build Change partnered with PCI’s Barrio Mío Guatemala, a neighborhood improvement program to reduce the vulnerability of Mixco (in the Guatemala City Metropolitan Area) to landslides, erosion, flooding, earthquakes, and hurricanes. Build Change implemented a subsidy-based housing retrofitting program to retrofit homes in Mixco as a demonstration of the process and a local training opportunity.
Honduras: Post-Disaster and Climate-Change Adaptation
Hurricane survivors are retrofitting their homes and adding a second story as part of our climate-change adaptation program in Honduras, with the Honduran Red Cross. Families in the Sula Valley are highly exposed to flooding and experiencing increasingly aggressive storms, with damages from climate hazards expected to double in the next twenty years.
The new second stories are providing a safe place of refuge in times of flooding, while structural strengthening improves earthquake and hurricane resilience. Overall home improvements and expansion enhance living conditions, generate income, and increase home value. Solar panels and rainwater collection tanks will provide greater autonomy against power outages following severe storms and increasing periods of water scarcity.
The program demonstrates how adaptation can offer a more cost-effective, sustainable alternative to temporary shelters, new construction, or relocation, while reducing climate-forced migration.
United States: Disaster Prevention
Through advocacy, increasing knowledge and access to financing for home strengthening, and catalyzing systems change, Build Change will secure and develop the nation’s resilience beginning with America’s frontline communities. Join us as we transform unsafe, vulnerable housing in the U.S. into vibrant, equitable places of safety, health, and opportunity.
By prioritizing disaster prevention at both a climate and housing policy level in the U.S., we are working to:
-Identify and overcome the current roadblocks to resilient housing programs in the U.S.
-Bridge the gap in resources to directly benefit low-income, socially vulnerable households within high-risk hazard areas
-Greatly reduce health hazard risks by making frontline homes and neighborhoods healthier, safer, and more disaster-resilient over time
-Deliver tangible Climate-action and Advocacy for the Promotion of Equity (CAPE) in housing preservation and impact funding for socially vulnerable households in high-hazard regions
Philippines: Affordable loans for women, for disaster resilience
In the Philippines, access to finance for home strengthening can be a key constraint for poorer families-particularly female-headed households. Subsequently, Build Change is incentivizing preventative home strengthening by creating affordable loans with technical assistance, in collaboration with local microfinance institutions (MFIs). These innovative loan products are enabling hundreds of low-income women to upgrade their homes for disaster resilience for the first time.
Loans are accompanied by support materials including implementation tools, workshops, and training materials for homeowners and loan officers. Build Change is working to build the technical capacity of MFIs & increase their fund sources, & mitigate the risk associated with lending. By collaborating with bigger lenders with higher financial capacities and risk tolerance, we hope to catalyze the flow of financial investment from the mainstream financial market and make larger funds available to MFIs.
Türkiye & Syria: Resilient Housing Recovery and Prevention
Build Change is working urgently to return families to safe, permanent homes and schools in Türkiye & Syria and to prevent future disasters, following the devastating earthquakes in February 2023.
Our local and international teams are identifying major policy, financing, and building technology solutions that will influence long-term, resilient reconstruction. Initial efforts include:
-Evaluating damaged buildings and determining the feasibility of repairing & upgrading for disaster resilience (a faster, more cost-effective, and less carbon-intensive solution compared to demolishing and building new)
-Examining buildings that performed well in the earthquake and identifying lessons that can be applied for safe reconstruction, leveraging widely-known, locally available improvements to existing ways of building.
-Sharing technical expertise and best practices, and strengthening government, contractors' and families' capacity to rebuild in a resilient, responsible manner.
Where we work
Awards
Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship 2017
Skoll Foundation
Social Design Circle honoree 2017
Curry Stone Design Prize
Urban Resilience Challenge Winner 2016
OpenIDEO
Academy of Distinguished Alumni (Dr. Elizabeth Hausler) 2014
University of California, Berkeley
Autodesk Tech Impact Award 2014
Autodesk Foundation
US Social Entrepreneur of the Year 2011
Schwab Foundation
External reviews
Our results
How does this organization measure their results? It's a hard question but an important one.
Evaluation documents
Download evaluation reportsNumber of people no longer living in unsafe or substandard housing as a result of the nonprofit's efforts
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Population(s) Served
Low-income people, Extremely poor people, Women and girls, Men and boys, Victims of disaster
Type of Metric
Outcome - describing the effects on people or issues
Direction of Success
Increasing
Number of people trained
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Population(s) Served
Extremely poor people, Low-income people, Victims of disaster, Women and girls, Men and boys
Type of Metric
Output - describing our activities and reach
Direction of Success
Increasing
Number of buildings made safer as a result of the nonprofit's efforts
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Population(s) Served
Victims of disaster, Women and girls, Men and boys, Low-income people, Extremely poor people
Type of Metric
Outcome - describing the effects on people or issues
Direction of Success
Increasing
Number of organizations changed as a result of the nonprofit's efforts
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Type of Metric
Outcome - describing the effects on people or issues
Direction of Success
Increasing
Number of jobs created
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Population(s) Served
Extremely poor people, Low-income people, Victims of disaster, Women and girls, Men and boys
Type of Metric
Outcome - describing the effects on people or issues
Direction of Success
Increasing
Our Sustainable Development Goals
Learn more about Sustainable Development Goals.
Goals & Strategy
Learn about the organization's key goals, strategies, capabilities, and progress.
Charting impact
Four powerful questions that require reflection about what really matters - results.
What is the organization aiming to accomplish?
Build Change’s goals are to protect lives, livelihoods, and economic assets by preventing housing loss caused by disasters. In order to do this long-term and at scale, we work globally to transform the systems for building, improving, financing, and regulating housing.
Build Change believes every home should be resilient. We define resilient housing as housing that is:
Disaster-resistant: Able to prevent people and assets in the face of multiple hazards.
Healthy and secure: With adequate water, sanitation, ventilation, light, access, space, and security.
Affordable: Financially accessible for low-to middle-income households.
Adaptable: Can be expanded and adapted to growing populations, shifting demographics, and emerging technology.
Sustainable: Built and/or strengthened through processes that can be scaled and replicated, with minimal environmental footprint.
A financial asset and/or a place of business that stimulates economic opportunity by being adaptable to multiple uses, and protecting a family’s property investment.
Locally appropriate: Built using materials, skills, and tools that are appropriate for the culture and the climate.
Scalable: Able to meet the needs of millions of families through a combination of policy change and finance and technology.
What are the organization's key strategies for making this happen?
Build Change mobilizes people, money, and technology to overcome the obstacles that prevent everyone from living in a safe, resilient home. Our strategies are based on achieving this in the long-term and at scale, by transforming the systems for regulating, financing, building, and improving houses around the world. We work with homeowners, governments, financial institutions, and a range of partners to achieve this, through a combination of:
-Advocacy and awareness-raising, to create demand for resilient housing
-Policy reform, to reduce bottlenecks and drive change at scale
-Access to finance, like grants and loans, to make resilient housing affordable to everyone
-Access to information, to make resilient housing accessible to everyone
-Local capacity building, to develop engineering, construction, and program expertise
Our unique approach places emphasis on:
-Decision equity - homeowner-led processes allow homeowners to lead at every stage, and recognize that people know what is best for them, their homes, and their families
-A holistic approach - our focus is not only on saving lives, but improving lives, by ensuring that homes are safe, locally appropriate, healthy, and secure spaces, and a financial asset that can provide opportunities for growth.
Our work on housing supports several of the Sustainable Development Goals, particularly if we consider the ways that housing is at the intersection of health, social equity, and climate change:
-Health: Better housing is better health. Safe housing is foundational for wellness and means access to running water for washing hands and cooking, a place to recover from illness, a place to study and work, and sturdy protection from earthquakes, hurricanes, and other hazards.
-Gender equity: Women and children are 14 times more likely to die in a disaster. Build Change supports women with increased access to information, affordable finance, and technical assistance, and trains women block makers and construction workers - we recognize and support women as excellent leaders and stewards of their family’s safety and wellbeing.
-Climate change: As climate-related disasters have become more frequent and more severe, houses and people across the globe are more vulnerable than ever before to a range of threats, such as hurricanes, floods, fires, and extreme heat. Our emphasis on improving existing housing rather than building new homes also supports the reduction of carbon emissions from the construction sector.
-Racial justice: By supporting families with access to information, financing, and technical assistance to improve their homes Build Change works to counteract the harms of structural and systemic racism and improve health, well-being, and equity outcomes.
What are the organization's capabilities for doing this?
Build Change is the global leader in systems change for disaster-resilient housing. With nearly 20 years’ experience in developing and implementing innovative and scalable solutions to improve housing performance during disasters, Build Change has amassed a wealth of knowledge in risk reduction and mitigation. We have tested and evolved our resilient housing model in over 24 countries in an array of disasters, including earthquakes, windstorms, floods, and the pandemic. We know how to transform vulnerability into resilience.
Build Change is a trusted advisor and thought leader. Our engagements with leading international development and finance institutions, and climate change communities of practice, shape global policy, and programming. We bring forward-looking market insights, technical assistance, and public and private investment opportunities to drive resilience in the housing sector.
Examples of technical assistance and advisory services include:
-National and systems-level resilient housing policy and program assessment, strategy, and guidance
-Risk and mitigation, post-disaster reconnaissance and subsector studies for housing and schools
-Digital tools for scaling disaster-resilient housing solutions
-Expansion of resilient housing microfinance lending for low-income women and their families
-Design and testing of public-private financing models that combine subsidies with market lending to reach homeowners further down market
-Collaboration with high-level international coordinating mechanisms on climate change
What have they accomplished so far and what's next?
Build Change has already achieved impacts at scale and helped to revolutionize an entire global industry, shifting the post-disaster reconstruction industry from top-down, contractor-driven solutions that alienate homeowners to bottom-up, homeowner-driven solutions that build local capacity and put power back in the hands of the people. Since 2004, Build Change has made over 100,000 buildings safer for over 600,000 people, created 35,000 jobs and protected almost $2 billion in housing assets, while helping to establish lasting mechanisms for resilient housing around the world.
Build Change’s experience shows that home improvement programs focused on improving existing housing can be successful across a range of country and disaster contexts, regardless of a country’s technical and financial constraints. Examples of our impact across our global programs include:
-In Colombia, Build Change has successfully demonstrated that structural upgrades to reduce disaster risk within existing housing stock can be done affordably and at scale, and assisted the government to set up systems and change policies needed to reach hundreds of thousands of families. This has since led to almost $1 billion in public investment to fund resilient housing in the country through national and city-wide initiatives to strengthen and improve housing.
-In Nepal, after the 2015 Gorkha earthquake, Build Change implemented large-scale technical assistance programs, developed an AI app, built demonstration houses and retrofits, and advanced building codes to maximize the government’s reconstruction investments. Our innovation in engineering and digital tools made it possible to conduct structural retrofits of rural homes at a national scale, for approximately 15% of the cost of replacing them.
-In the Philippines, Build Change co-developed innovative loan products with microfinance partners that enable low-income women to access financing to strengthen their homes to better withstand windstorms and earthquakes. Our built-to-scale technical assistance platform drives quality construction and repayment performance.
Build Change’s role as an advocate for resilient housing is expanding, as we work to elevate housing on the climate change agenda. Build Change leads the Climate Resilient Housing Initiative as part of the Race to Resilience within the UN-Conference of the Parties.
What’s Next?: We remain agile to support homeowners, governments, and partner organizations with reconstruction needs following disasters in new territories while working to expand our ongoing post-disaster reconstruction and disaster-prevention programs across the world. In 2021, Build Change is launching in the United States for the first time in response to the increased intensity and frequency of disasters in the country that are disproportionately impacting those who are economically disadvantaged and marginalized populations.
How we listen
Seeking feedback from people served makes programs more responsive and effective. Here’s how this organization is listening.
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How is your organization using feedback from the people you serve?
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What challenges does the organization face when collecting feedback?
Financials
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Operations
The people, governance practices, and partners that make the organization tick.
Connect with nonprofit leaders
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- Analyze a variety of pre-calculated financial metrics
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Connect with nonprofit leaders
SubscribeBuild relationships with key people who manage and lead nonprofit organizations with GuideStar Pro. Try a low commitment monthly plan today.
- Analyze a variety of pre-calculated financial metrics
- Access beautifully interactive analysis and comparison tools
- Compare nonprofit financials to similar organizations
Want to see how you can enhance your nonprofit research and unlock more insights? Learn More about GuideStar Pro.
BUILD CHANGE
Board of directorsas of 03/15/2023
Dr. Elizabeth Hausler
Martin Fisher
KickStart International
Elizabeth Hausler
Build Change
Grace Hanson
Hippo
Hemant Shah
Archipelago Analytics
Erin Bradner
Autodesk
Organizational demographics
Who works and leads organizations that serve our diverse communities? Candid partnered with CHANGE Philanthropy on this demographic section.
Leadership
No data
Race & ethnicity
No data
Gender identity
Transgender Identity
Sexual orientation
No data
Disability
No data
Equity strategies
Last updated: 05/26/2022GuideStar partnered with Equity in the Center - an organization that works to shift mindsets, practices, and systems to increase racial equity - to create this section. Learn more
- We seek individuals from various race backgrounds for board and executive director/CEO positions within our organization.
- We engage everyone, from the board to staff levels of the organization, in race equity work and ensure that individuals understand their roles in creating culture such that one’s race identity has no influence on how they fare within the organization.