Across the country, women make up only 11.5% of payroll employees in the construction industry.
But at FORGE Girls Construction Camp this week, every camper hammering nails, pouring concrete, and hanging drywall was a girl.
The camp, aimed at girls ages 11 to 15, introduces them to not only careers in construction but also to teach practical life skills, like using a tape measure and operating a power drill.
“We just want them to know that they’re powerful. They’re fierce. They’re strong. They can do anything they want to do,” FORGE Executive Director Melinda Lowe told The Dispatch. “… Some may go into the field, some may not, but that’s OK. We’re just teaching them that they have opportunities just like anyone else.”
Only in its second year, Lowe said the camp has already doubled in size, with 24 girls participating from counties across the state. The group has spent the week learning construction basics, talking to skilled trade professionals and touring active construction sites, like the BankFirst site on College Street on Thursday.
FORGE – a collective of local construction companies that work to promote awareness of skilled trade opportunities – started the camp last year as a way to give girls exposure to an industry in which women are vastly underrepresented. While women make up nearly 80% of office and administrative roles in the construction industry, less than 5% of hands-on construction roles and only 2% of maintenance jobs are filled by women, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
“Women in construction, it’s a very underrepresented group, and so we want these young girls to understand that they have options and that this might be something that interests them,” she said. “We just want them to try the different aspects of the industry to maybe find something that they really like and maybe they want to take some classes in a career (technology) center to get to know more about it.”
Camp volunteer Sierra Case, who now studies building construction science at Mississippi State, said that kind of early exposure as a teenager would have saved her years of uncertainty.
“I grew up with blue collar people, but nothing that was more than just building a shelf at home,” Case told The Dispatch. “If I had something like this that actually exposed me to the construction world and the different ins and outs of it, that would have saved me probably two years of college and $15,000 in tuition because I didn’t know that was an option for me.
Seeing what’s possible
New Hope sophomore Sam Sanders, who returned to the camp this year as a mentor, said the camp provides insight into what a construction job might look like.
“It’s an important opportunity because they can see what things would be like,” Sanders said. “We’re here at a job site right now, they’ll be able to see, ‘Oh, if I really want to go into this, this is what it’s going to feel like.’”
As they learn new skills, campers put them to practice during their group construction project – building wooden food pantries to place in Columbus and Lowndes County.
Sanders said the camp also helps campers and other mentors build soft skills, like learning to work in a group setting and learning how to focus on the task at hand.
“In the shop, whenever we’re doing stuff, it’s a girls camp, so we’re all going to talk and (mess around), but then whenever you get actually down to business, you have to know how to stop and actually focus in,” she said. “I feel like these girls have really learned how to stop and focus in.”
A camp that builds confidence
Lowe said her favorite part of the week has been watching campers build their confidence as they expand their skillsets.
“They are a group that is very willing to learn and to put into practice what they’ve learned,” she said. “I think also what has made me so proud is to hear from our girls from last year how they’ve grown, how what they learned last year gave them the confidence (to take on projects at home).”
Lowe said she’s heard from previous campers and their parents about different construction-related projects they’ve completed since they left camp last summer, from replacing a light switch in a bedroom to fixing a faucet that had been broken for years.
“I had a mom reach out earlier this year (and send) me a picture of her daughter, who was doing some welding,” Lowe said. “She said she would have never had the confidence and felt that she could do that without having come to camp last year.”
In the future, Lowe said FORGE is hoping to expand that impact across the state, as the foundation recently started a Northeast Mississippi chapter and has plans to open in other regions as well.
“We just want to take this across the state and show young women that they have opportunities and various career pathways, whatever that may look like for them,” she said.
McRae is a general assignment and education reporter for The Dispatch.
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Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 36 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
