Elizabeth is honored by ELLE as one of “9 for All Mankind”, nine women who are educating, rebuilding, doctoring, employing, and sustaining the world.

Elizabeth wins the 2011 Lemelson-MIT Award for Sustainability

In Indonesia, Build Change expands a partnership with Caterpillar Foundation to train vocational students and teachers, reaching over 6,000.

In Haiti, Build Change spends most of the year developing retrofitting guidelines and training people, waiting for someone to start deploying cash subsidies for materials and labor for housing reconstruction.  The money in Money – Technology – People is so far missing; a stool with two legs cannot stand.  These short courses are good for building awareness but have limited long-term impact on skills development because they are not done on-the-job while rebuilding homes.

Hilti Foundation becomes a major partner and donor and takes a board seat.  With the Hilti Foundation support, Build Change builds a senior management team, which eventually grows to 10 people on the 10th anniversary, 50% women.

Build Change writes an article chronicling the experience in trying to shift donors and agencies to homeowner-driven reconstruction, published in Innovations journal and released at the Clinton Global Initiative Annual Meeting, where Elizabeth is a speaker on an innovative design panel.

An essay by Dr. Hausler on the Build Change homeowner-driven model in Haiti is featured in the Innovations Journal, published by MIT press and the Clinton Global Initiative.

Build Change starts work in Haiti by providing critical guidance on the repair guideline being developed by various agencies, pushing it more toward a retrofit guide, and signing an MOU with the Haiti MTPTC, which remains in place to this day.

Wired includes Build Change in a blog on rebuilding Haiti: “This is why Build Change doesn’t win a lot of these cool, prestigious awards,” Hausler says. “What we do is very low-tech. It’s not very fancy. It’s not really anything new. It’s just improving an existing technology, but by doing that we reach so many more people with locally appropriate solutions.”…

LINK: Wired Covers Build Change’s Work

Build Change goes to Haiti, meets these homeowners on the edge of Leogane, who have already started rebuilding.  They have invested their own resources in building a safer building, and are eager for more information on disaster-resistant construction.  The first sign that the homeowner-driven model can work in Haiti.

The New York Times features Build Change in an article about rebuilding after Haiti:  “Managing Disasters with Small Steps”

A catastrophic Mw = 7.0 earthquake hits near Port-au-Prince, Haiti.  Over 100,000 people were killed; 250,000 housing units lost.  The previous day, the Build Change board of directors endorsed an expansion plan to Latin America to work with people to build safe buildings before an earthquake strikes; that expansion is put on hold.

The Jakarta Globe Covers Build Change Work in Padang

Another earthquake hits West Sumatra, proof of concept for Build Change: none of the 655 homeowners who followed Build Change minimum standards for safe construction have damage in this earthquake.   Build Change expands operations again, supporting NGOs such as CARE, Catholic Relief Services, Mercy Corps, Oxfam, and Save the Children to provide technical assistance for safe housing reconstruction and builders training programs.  While external agencies promote temporary shelters and masonry structures, Build Change supports the local government in promoting timber frame buildings,

Elizabeth wins and Ashoka-Lemelson fellowship.

Near the first anniversary of the Wenchuan earthquake, NPR All Things Considered runs a story on Build Change’s homeowner-driven reconstruction program in China.

LINK: NPR Story on Rebuilding in China

Natural History New Zealand films a documentary to air on National Geographic about the Wenchuan earthquake, featuring a series of interviews with scientists and engineers including Dr. Elizabeth Hausler.  

Paul VanderMarck, Chief Products Officer with Risk Management Solutions, joins Build Change board of directors.

In China, Build Change partners with the Tumen Township government and a local NGO to implement a successful technical assistance programs.

All elements are in place – Money – Technology – People.

Money: the government provided sufficient funding for rebuilding a basic house.

People: they provided enforcement (through our team of Chinese construction professionals) and incentives for following the standards.  Build Change empowered homeowners with the knowledge and technology to build safely (Read Xing Dayan’s Story).

Build Change wins the Tech Award for Technology Benefiting Humanity in the Katherine M. Swanson Equality Category.

Mw=7.9 earthquake in Wenchuan, Sichuan, China levels entire villages, kills 69,195 people with an additional 18,392 missing, and leaves at least 5 million people homeless.  Many collapsed buildings are multi-story, made of poorly confined masonry walls with precast concrete plank roofs.  This building type is common in China, Central Asia and Eastern Europe and likely to result in more devastation in future events.

Build Change begins operations in West Sumatra, providing design advice to 655 homeowners who receive small grants from the Indonesian government to rebuild.  Many homeowners cannot afford to build confined masonry buildings well; Build Change begins promoting timber frame with masonry skirt wall, a common building type in West Sumatra.