Women in Construction Benefit from Consortium

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BY TIA CAROL JONES

“I never thought I would be able to work on a project of this magnitude,” she said.

Harris and Tenna D. Monroe are two women who are working on the Obama Presidential Center. The Obama Foundation convened the We Can Build It Consortium after receiving $3 million from Bank of America to support its workforce development and community support initiatives. The We Can Build It Consortium and the Obama Presidential Center developed a pipeline of talented people in the construction industry.

Partners for We Can Build It include Chicago Women in Trades, HIRE360, Revolution Workshop, St. Paul Community Development Ministries, Chicago Regional Council of Carpenters and IBEW 134. Through the Chicago Women In Trades program, Harris has made lifelong mentors and friends. She liked the group of women in the plumbing program and the camaraderie they had. The part that piqued her interest the most was when they had to solder copper and move around materials.

During her work at the Obama Presidential Center, she and her team have laid thousands of feet of drain tile and put up cast iron drain pipe. She said the work has been hard, but good. She has learned a lot in the year and a half she has been working on the project.

It means everything for Harris to work on the project, especially since it is for President Barack Obama. Her first time being eligible to vote, she voted for Obama. So, to be on this project means a lot to her.

“I’m able to tell my son, he’s the first President I ever voted for and I was a part of building out his dream and what he wanted to bring to the city,” Harris said. Her advice to other women who are interested in the skilled trades: Come in, work hard, be willing to learn and be prepared to take off.

Monroe works as a Carpenter Steward on the Obama Presidential Center project. She got her start as a Carpenter when she saw some construction workers working on the sewage main and asked them if they were hiring. She went to become a union worker and has been in the skilled trades since then. That was almost 30 years ago.

Monroe said working on the Obama Presidential Center project has been amazing. Everybody gets along and it is the first job site she has worked on where the majority of the workers also looked like her. “I really like what they’re is doing with the community, bringing in young Black youth, introducing them to the trade and different aspects of the trades,” she said.

Monroe sees all the programs that are available to people interested in the skilled trades as a good thing. She was not aware of those programs when she got started in the industry 28 years ago. Now, she is trying to get her daughter involved in the skilled trades program with Lakeside Alliance as a machine operator. For more information about We Can Build It and Chicago Women in Trades, visit www.cwit.org.