Women Who Build: Artist Who Own is a project that empowers women to build their construction skills, grow their networks, and increase their confidence.

Women and girls are stereotyped as being helpless when it comes to building and using tools. Women Who Build; Artist Who Own is a project that brings women and girls together to fight and prove these stereotypes wrong. This project is giving us confidence when it comes to using machinery, installing a roof, installing flooring, and more. The skills we learn will help us go back to our homes and communities, feel empowered, and have stronger women networks to draw strength from.

The way we are accomplishing this is by having monthly meetings. In these monthly meetings, women are broken up into groups: fundraising, sourcing, design, project management, skill building, marketing and volunteer coordination, and documenting. Each woman is responsible for volunteering at least 6 hours a month to accomplish the task assigned during the meeting. After each meeting, women from ages 14-70+ participate in a 1 hour skill building class designed by the skill building team. This project started in October and will be completed at the end of August.

In June, the women participating in the project will build an actual tiny house on wheels at knockdown center in maspeth. Any woman can participate as long as she signs up online at meetup for a new member meeting.

We love this project, both for its grassroots nature, and because our funds will help buy power tools that participants in the workshop will use to make a very small house. Power tools are Awesome.

If you would like to participate, check out their Meetup group.