Delta Design Build Workshop grew from a construction company into a social impact design, build, and teaching collaborative in 2016. Post Rose Fellowship, we are excited to have continued to work in the Mississippi Delta, building equity through the built environment and working in partnership with communities and organizations that share our values.

Unfortunately, while we were busy with all that growth, writing blog posts didn’t make it to the top of my to-do list. So to end the year, we are recapping a great twelve months with a series of blog posts that highlight how we stretched our capacity, our brains, our schedules, our budgets, and our legs in 2016.

To start the list, Delta DB’s longstanding partnership with Village Life Outreach Project continued. Our design team grew to include recent University of Cincinnati DAAP graduate Jesse Larkins as a summer intern, and Richard traveled to Tanzania to wrap up construction of one medical personnel duplex, and begin a second one. These staff houses are essential to support the Roche Health Center (read more about RHC here) because the remoteness of the site means that resident doctors and nurses are required for the center to qualify to offer many important medical services and medications.

We are thrilled to continue to be a part of this team (including partners both in Cincinnati and Roche) that values health and human life so much.

Many aspects of the process that has developed over our seven years of working with UC, Roche, and Village Life is represented in the pictures below. Roche residents build masonry (fence posts and soil bricks) on site, a team of Tanzanian craftsmen lead the construction crew, women are a part of the construction team, new water and electrical infrastructure is being developed, and UC alumni, faculty, and students provide medical care. It makes me proud to be a Bearcat.