 Build Change is a non-profit social enterprise that works with people in developing countries to build houses and schools that don't collapse in earthquakes and typhoons. There are two basic problems that we're trying to solve. The first one is the number of deaths, injuries, and economic losses that often happen in emerging nations when there is an earthquake. It's not the earthquake that kills people, it's the collapse of a poorly built building. So this is a man-made problem and there has to be a man-made solution. The second problem is how the relief industry has traditionally approached post-disaster housing reconstruction. Usually they bring in a bunch of contractors to build large numbers of houses for people at a high cost per house with very little opportunity to build local skills and contribute to the local economy and without involving the homeowner in the process. We've been working within the industry to change the way post-disaster reconstruction is done. The motion tsunami happened in Indonesia in 2004. We started our first program in Aceh to help people rebuild after that disaster. And because I was a bricklayer, I could actually go out and train masons how to lay bricks. So we started small and on the ground. We hired local engineers, local architects. We got our hands dirty trying to figure out how do you actually build an earthquake-resistant house in this context. Once we figured out how to do it ourselves, we started outsourcing our methodology. So we shared our design and construction guidelines with other NGOs. We trained their staff. We supervised their construction. We trained their builders. And we were able to increase our impacts by a factor of 100 by doing this. We've been expanding our model from a direct service approach to a system change approach. We're working with governments from the start right after a disaster to change the way they approach the reconstruction. So we're trying to change the system. In China, after the 2008 earthquake, we actually had more power. We had more ability to enforce building standards by partnering with the government. They gave us these IDs that made us look like government officials, and we would go out and inspect the buildings, train builders on the job, report back to the government. And this was a very, very successful partnership that allowed us to scale up to over a thousand houses in a short time. So now partnering with governments is essential to what we do. With Haiti, we have a partnership with the Ministry of Public Works where we work together with them to write the first-ever guideline on retrofitting or strengthening a building. And we've used that guideline to train government engineers. In Colombia, we also have a partnership with the Colombian government in which we are training the Colombian government vocational institution. We're doing a train the trainers. We're training their team to train other builders in how to build safe houses. We're also partnering with a government subsidy program. Build change doesn't build houses for people. We don't provide the financing for people to build houses. That usually comes from some other source. Because we're working in an environment where building code enforcement isn't common, we need to use that financing as leverage. So we regularly partner with the institutions that provide that financing to make sure that it's contingent upon meeting standards for construction. We're not expecting homeowners to build a house themselves. We're expecting them to hire a local builder who produces their house. So the private sector provides the supply for safe construction while the homeowners have to demand safe construction. We work very closely with the private sector. Everything from the small-scale local builder, the local building material producer, on up to financing institutions, insurance companies and large-scale contractors and material suppliers. Over the years, we have evolved or I guess better defined our theory of change and the barriers to scale for what we do. And it really comes down to money, technology and people. We have to have the right technology. It has to be locally available. The builders have to have the skills and tools to build with it. The architecture has to be appropriate for the climate. And so we've got to get the technology right. On the money side, whatever we're proposing people to do, it has to be affordable. If people don't have enough money, they're not going to build a safe house. And so we are increasingly using financial incentives, insurance incentives to encourage people or to compel people to build safely. On the people side, someone has to want a house or school to be earthquake or disaster resistant. We work with governments to enforce building standards. We work with homeowners so that they understand how to build a safe house and they can demand it. And also use social media and radio and various different messaging campaigns to get the word out to massive numbers of people about safe construction. If you are in social innovation, I recommend that you consider how this money technology people model really applies to what you're doing, how to get the right financing in place, how to make sure that technology is appropriate and how to compel people to really change.