Training

Training Across Stakeholder Groups

Through adapting training content, materials and delivery methods to the intended audience, Build Change reaches all stakeholders across the construction value chain so they better understand the elements essential to their role in creating disaster- and climate-resilient buildings. Engineers, government officials, homeowners, builders, vocational students, and building materials producers have all been participants in training on these design and construction principles. Training and awareness-raising improves local knowledge and skills for building safer homes and schools in accordance with government standards and generally accepted principles of disaster-resistant construction. Simplified language and image-based tools are the primary tools in construction training, so they are accessible to people with or without technical or construction backgrounds.

Community organization training in Colombia

Homeowners

Homeowners participate in trainings to know why there’s a need to adopt resilient construction practices and to be involved with the entire construction process, including choosing good-quality building materials, supervising construction, and overseeing the builders who will work on their house. Trainings focus on increasing understanding of the principles and importance of disaster-resistant house construction, as well as how to identify good-quality construction materials. This training, combined with hands-on experience in managing the construction of their home, equips homeowners with the knowledge and skills needed to support disaster-resistant construction.

Government agencies

Build Change partners with local governments to develop simple, practical design guidelines and systems for designing, building and inspecting safe houses, and to develop streamlined, simple supervision and monitoring systems for enforcing those standards.

Build Change also provides technical assistance and train-the-trainer programs to government engineers and technical staff so they can implement safe, sustainable, satisfactory reconstruction programs, reach a much greater scale, and create sustainable change at the government level.

School officials and councils

School officials and councils are often the closest stakeholders to reconstruction and rehabilitation done at their schools; they can be trained in basic construction supervision so they may identify key problems to review with supervising engineers. Training sessions include an overview of the key elements of disaster-resistance in school designs, common areas where structural construction pitfalls can occur and how to identify them, identification of good-quality construction materials, and an overview of the expected construction schedule.