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February 2021 #13259 Page #120
Build Change: My Favorite Child
By Tim Hart, SE
With the growing danger of natural disasters, the race is on to expand access to programs that safeguard lives from the human-made danger of poorly built housing. With the common mission of building safer, stronger structures, Build Change and Simpson Strong-Tie have partnered for the Simpson Strong-Tie® Fellowship for Engineering Excellence program. The 2020 fellow is Build Change Engineering & Design Services Director Tim Hart, SE. As with our previous fellows, Hart is documenting his journey with the program on the Simpson Strong-Tie Structural Engineering blog. This is his final report.
In 2017, when I was in Nepal working for Build Change, I had a conversation with one of my colleagues about the volunteer work that I had done for the organization over the years. After telling him that I had worked with seven different country programs for Build Change, he asked me which of those countries I liked the best. My first thought was that it was like asking a parent which child he or she liked the best; even if I did have a favorite, I didn’t want to say it out loud for fear of offending my colleagues and friends in all the other countries. I said this to him to deflect the conversation and we went on to discuss other topics. Truth be told, while I enjoyed the culture and hospitality of all my Build Change host countries and believe in the value of the work I’ve done for them, I have a special soft spot for two of them: Indonesia and Nepal. The devastating Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami on December 26, 2004 killed approximately 230,000 people in 14 different countries. Almost three-quarters of those killed were in Indonesia alone. Over half a million people in Indonesia were left homeless. Reading about this tragedy from my home in California, I felt a very strong urge to help. However, just writing checks to relief agencies didn’t feel like enough — not for a disaster of this scale. A few months later, in early 2005, I heard about Build Change and Elizabeth Hausler from a work colleague. At the time, Build Change was a start-up with a staff of one (Elizabeth); its office was a San Francisco apartment (Elizabeth’s), and the organization had two names, Build Change and the Center for Earthquake Resistant Houses. Even though Build Change was a very small and very new
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