Women Build Team Volunteers in Greater Grand Crossing

A day of building with Habitat for Humanity!

After a very successful fundraiser, Team WOW (Women of WJW) recently donned hard hats and headed to Chicago's Greater Grand Crossing neighborhood to volunteer at a build day for Women Build. The site includes four new construction single family homes with detached garages. Volunteer coordinators Pete and Kathy led the team, and future Habitat Homeowner Natasha joined the crew as well for the day.

The main project for the day was to install fiber cement siding on one of the garages. The 11-woman team broke up into groups of 3-4 and each worked a different side of the garage. For Maggie, "it gave me an appreciation of the detail, skill, and craft that goes into each piece of construction and a better understanding of the coordination effort it takes to make a project run smoothly and efficiently to the finish line. It was helpful to be able to work with products that we specify on our own projects and see field application!"

Women Build is a program through Habitat for Humanity that raises funds and contributes to the construction of homes for women home buyers. This is the first year WJW has participated, and it was an incredibly rewarding experience. Maggie reflects, "I think it gave us all a good opportunity to work as a team in a different way than what we are used to in our general project team structure. We also had to communicate, find a flow of work, and execute tasks together as a larger team, keeping in mind Habitat's mission and the goal of completing the four houses. Uplifting women, their capabilities, and skill sets ran through the whole event; it was just really nice to see so many talented women working together for the greater good." Kolbi added: "I had never seen so many women on one construction site - it was awesome! It was a great team-building activity and all for an amazing cause. Before we had even ended the day we were already making plans to participate again next year."

Special thanks to Jane for organizing the team this year, and a big thank you to everyone who donated to our team! Last day to donate is October 26!