Recognizing that earthquakes don’t kill people, but building collapse does, Elizabeth Hausler is changing practices of home building in earthquake-prone regions to engage citizens, set in place lasting practices of change, and insure safe housing.

Organization: Build Change
Field of Work: Economic Development
Location: San Francisco, California
Year Elected: 2009
Fellow Type: Fellow

Tens of thousands of people die every year in earthquake-affected regions, most in developing countries. Yet, as Elizabeth sees, the quality and efficacy of response is highly variant, location to location, quake to quake. To correct the problem, she is injecting into the system of earthquake response and home re-building higher standards of building; an ethic and practice of using low-cost, locally-available technologies and materials; and a culture of change, of learning. Working with local government and local and international organizations, she sets in place a practice of engaging homeowners, engineers, and contractors around questions of safety and preference – they become part of the re-building, part of the change. Elizabeth is building a flexible organization that molds itself easily to fit the need of the particular post-earthquake environment – whether in post-tsunami Indonesia in the context of significant (too much) international aid, or in Sichuan, China, where the Chinese government is managing the rebuilding process, with little outside support.