AWSEM at the Willamette Carpenter Training Center

Helensview High School Women Help Build Habitat Home

We can build it! 

Nurturing the Next Generation:  TO GO Inspires Girls to Examine Choices

Students Explore New Plumbing Workshop 
 

AWSEM at the Willamette Carpenter Training Center 

Young women from the AWSEM Club (Advocates for Women in Science, Mathematics and Engineering) at Ockley Green school toured the Willamette Carpenter Training Center last month. They built tool boxes and learned all about being a carpenter from carpenter Kathy Saunders and brownfields worker trainee Cathy Wilkerson. 

The materials for the toolboxes were donated by Emerick Construction. Many thanks to Mike Hawes and the Carpenter’s staff for hosting the young women..

Helensview High School Women Help Build Habitat Home 

OTN members had the wonderful experience of working with these and other young women from Helensview High School this summer.

We worked together on the Habitat for Humanity Women's Build Home, taking it from ground breaking to the first floor walls. 

"The young women were a lot of fun", said site manager Melissa Medeiros. "You could tell it was really scarey for them at first, but by the end of the day they were just waling away with their hammers." 

We can build it! 

The Mathematical Applications in Construction (MAiC) 1998 summer camp introduced the world of construction to 24 eighth-graders from Portland area middle schools. The students (eleven girls and thirteen boys) learned math concepts used in the building and construction trades - and then used those concepts to build t-fittings and tool boxes at the Sheet Metal Training Center, build walls at the Willamette Carpenter Training Center, and wire switches and lights into the walls at the NECA/IBEW Electrical Training Center.

The camp was a joint program of Oregon Tradeswomen. Saturday Academy, and Associated General Contractors. The program was designed to help African-American, Latino and Native-American students build concrete skills and confidence with mathematics as a problem solving tool. Along with the math and hands-on experiences, the students had guest speakers - men and women who work in the construction industry. 

Students comments about the week were, “I liked the hand-on projects”, “It helped me choose my future” and “I liked it when we worked together to build the wall”. 

Call OT if you know of a school that would like to sponsor a MAiC camp next summer - or if you would like to teach a workshop about your trade to young people. We are always looking for role-models and speakers - both for adult women, and for girls. We will train you in how to do a presentation or workshop, work with your employer or apprenticeship program to help you get the time off if the presentation is during the work week, and we will go with you for help and moral support. Or you can e-mail Janice at janice@tradeswomen.net. 

Nurturing the Next Generation:  TO GO Inspires Girls to Examine Choices

Young women are building.  Ask a group of high school girls if they’ve ever used tools, built a birdhouse, or helped fix things around the house, and many will raise their hands.  But ask if they have ever thought about how to apply those skills to succeed in the real world, and most won’t have a clue. 

That’s where OT comes in with Trades Offer Girls Options (TO GO), our program dedicated to inspiring young women to connect the hands-on work they enjoy with real-life opportunities in the trades.  Our message is clear:  when young women learn a trade, they gain economic independence and the confidence to seek out higher education with a purpose and a plan in mind. 

Although most students are encouraged to enter college directly out of high school, statistics show that fewer than half graduate within five years.  Giving young women the chance to earn a good living, gain valuable work experience, and develop a skill they can use for life is vitally important to their long-term productivity and self-esteem, as well as their economic stability.

Open-shop apprentice carpenter Megan Greenauer, a former Pathways to Success participant and a college graduate, is now volunteering with TO GO to help young women learn about carpentry. 

“When I graduated from college, I didn’t know how to do anything,” she says.  Megan and carpenter Anastasia Howard, who earned a master’s degree before enrolling in the B-FIT program at PCC, want girls to know that gaining a skill enhances any other life choices they make – and that apprenticeship is higher education. 

“The more education you have, the more power you have,” adds former firefighter, University of Oregon graduate and aspiring electrician Arissa Oliveros.  “When I first started out in college I was kind of lost.  I had a full-ride scholarship and wasn’t that focused.  If I had taken some time to figure out what I wanted to do, I would have gotten much more out of my education,” she says.

OT aspires to give young women insight into their many choices, help them develop their skills, and inspire them to design the future they want for themselves. 

Our workshops and site visits help girls understand the nature of trades training and work and inspire them to learn more.  So far this school year, we have conducted four hands-on workshops with girls from Tubman Middle School in Northeast Portland and the Girls’ Initiative Network in North Portland, and with young women and men at the Wattles Boys and Girls Club in Southeast Portland.  Eight more workshops and site visits are scheduled this month, including four tours behind the scenes at Oregon Ballet Theater’s production of The Nutcracker, hosted by stagehand electrician Robin Hoffmeister. 

Many thanks to the tradeswomen mentioned above, and to union apprentice electrician Angie Williamson, for conducting workshops over the past two months.

For more information about TO GO, please contact Darcy Varney at 503-943-2250, or follow the TO GO links on our web site, www.tradeswomen.net.

-Darcy Varney

(12/01)
 

Students Explore New Plumbing Workshop 

With the help of plumber and business owner Cricket Crockett and plumbers’ apprentice Tanya Paredes, we recently added a new hands-on workshop to our menu of Trades Offer Girls Options (TO GO) experiences for students.  The workshop, entitled “Pipes and Prints,” gives students a glimpse of the variety of skills used in the plumbing trade, including blueprint reading and spatial reasoning, accurate tape measure reading, and problem solving.  Cricket and Tanya presented the workshop to 22 girls at Columbia High School in White Salmon, Washington, in late February.

The girls had the opportunity to explore several plumbing-related activities during the workshop.  They changed the washer in a bathroom faucet, put together a water main pipe assembly and tested it for leaks, and followed an engineering plan to build a structure out of PVC pipe.  The girls also learned that plumbers have excellent earning potential—between $24 and $31 per hour after apprenticeship.

Freshman Debby Pulido enjoyed the experience, commenting that it was fun because, “I got to test my strength.”

Sophomore Elizabeth Bererra said that she liked the workshop because, “You learn things that girls really think that they can’t do but really can.”

And junior Carly Ingebo-Schraeder summed up the experience by saying, “Women need to know what a great opportunity trades work is.”

Thanks to Cricket and Tanya for sharing their knowledge and informing girls about the plumbing trade!

(3/02)