A Safer Home for Slum Dwellers in Metro Manila

We are happy to inform our partners and supporters that Build Change was selected as one of eight winners of OpenIDEO’s Urban Resilience Challenge, out of 350 entries from all over the world. OpenIDEO asked the question, “how might urban slum communities become more resilient to the effects of climate change?” Build Change proposed to address this problem by helping families living in urban slums to retrofit their existing houses, which will help ensure their safety and prevent loss of lives, livelihoods and injuries when a disaster, such as typhoon or earthquake, strikes.

As one of the winners, Build Change will receive funding and design support from OpenIDEO. Our Director of Programs and Partnerships and one of our Filipino Staff Engineers will participate in a four-day boot camp in Nairobi, Kenya later this March to learn more about human centered design and how it can be applied in our project.

We are very excited about this opportunity, especially since this will complement the support you have extended and enable us to seek government approval of the retrofit guidelines. At the same time, this will help us to advocate our idea to the wider public and reach out to more partners who can help us to further develop and scale our program.

Build Change is currently coordinating with local organizations working in urban slums in Metro Manila who can help us reach out to slum dwellers. In the coming months, we will also coordinate with local universities to engage their students, as part of their academic on-the-job training requirements, in conducting building assessment, structural evaluation, and development of retrofit designs. We are also looking forward to integrating our team’s learnings from the design boot camp.

Thank you so much again for your generosity. Together, we will enable urban slum dwellers to better prepare for, withstand and recover from natural disasters. 

Links:

• OpenIDEO Winners