CONWAY — Elizabeth Earl of Conway put her fists in the air when she heard the description of a Women Build for Habitat for Humanity.
“This is to empower women,” said Deb McKinley of Michigan. “We’re trying to teach women building skills in a nonthreatening learning environment.”
McKinley was one of several women working in Conway for two weeks to build a Habitat for Humanity of Faulkner County home. She and the other women drove “forever,” said Maureen Humphries — about 16 hours — to get to Conway.
“This is our volunteer hobby,” Kathy Mandziuk said. The women said they’ve constructed 11 homes through Women Build projects for their Habitat affiliate in Macomb County, Michigan.
They were brought in by the Not Forgotten Project, founded by Charlene Marie King of California, who recruited them for the project on Walnut Street. It was built in memory of 17-year-old Sammy Pinkston of Jonesboro, a disaster-relief volunteer who was killed Jan. 3 in a vehicle accident.
McKinley said she’s been working on Habitat homes since 1994. “I learned everything I know [about building] from Habitat,” she said. “I could hammer, but that’s it.”
Now she’s a house leader in charge of several crews.
Shenel Sandidge, executive director of Habitat for Humanity of Faulkner County, said she told the women about the planned Women Build 2015 in Conway, a first for the organization.
“They said, ‘Oh, that’s our passion.’” Faulkner County Habitat for Humanity is partnering with Conway Business and Professional Women on the build, which will kick off July 11 in the parking lot at Lowe’s Home Improvement Warehouse in Conway.
“We’re going to build walls,” Sandidge said. Women will don pink hats and shirts and wield hammers.
The home, No. 36 for the Faulkner County organization, will be built on Pine Street. Taneka Burrell of Conway, a single mother of five children, has been approved for the four-bedroom, 1 1/2-bath home.
Sandidge is vice president of BPW, and she said the work it does is always about empowering women. The Women Build 2015 seemed like the perfect opportunity for the club’s members, she said.
“This is something to get people outside their comfort zone and help others to see the need in their own communities,” Sandidge said.
Earl met the Michigan women and King when they came to do a project at Stand Together And No Drugs in Conway, a shelter and Christian ministry for women where participants in the program live in mobile homes.
“They showed me how to rip up the floor,” Earl said. “I love it; I love it.”
The women were sitting at a table in the Habitat for Humanity of Faulkner County warehouse in Conway. They built the walls of a five-bedroom house in the warehouse because of rain. The walls would be taken to the site.
McKinley said an all-female building project has a different feeling.
“What we’ve found, if men are on-site, the women are different,” she said. Women, even though they know how to do the work, often step back and allow the men to do a job, she said, or the men don’t think the women know what they’re doing.
“If you’ve been trained with the Lowe’s clinics, you know how to do it.”
Sandidge said Faulkner County Habitat for Humanity will partner with Lowe’s to have groups of women who sign up for the Women Build to attend how-to clinics, primarily to learn safety. Sandidge said women don’t have to have construction experience.
McKinley said it’s mainly on-the-job training.
“We can do everything a man can do — it may just take a couple more women to do it, to carry it,” Mandziuk said. She said women might have to take something apart and redo it
because “we are women, and we are particular.”
“We really believe the strength of the home rests on the women, and … we start building as if we’re going to live in it,” she said, adding that it’s done with “love and respect.”
Mandziuk said they built one home for a “handicapped woman,” and they took her with them as they picked out fixtures for the home. “We take into consideration the person we’ll build it for,” Mandziuk said.
Sandidge said she wants the Michigan women to come back in August to help on the Women Build, but she has to raise the money to pay for their trip.
“Oh, they are good,”
Sandidge said. “They can build a house in less than 10 weeks.” Her hope is that the women can work with the local teams.
The women were passing around a small piece of a board to sign for Earl to remember her work on the Walnut Street house.
“It’s my first house I built, so I want to remember that,” Earl said.
But she said it probably won’t be her last.
To join the Women Build 2015, email Sandidge at habitatfaulknerco.att.net, or call the office in Conway at (501) 513-3244.
Senior writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 327-0370 or tkeith@arkansasonline.com.