No roasting marshmallows around the fire for the girls at
Camp MAGIC Wednesday.
No tie-dyeing T-shirts, or weaving plastic strands into
lanyards, or knotting pink rubber bands into friendship bracelets.
Instead, the 18 girls, in grades 7 through 12, used a
drill press, saber saws, a spindle sander, and a high-powered nail gun to build
their own toolboxes, and, perhaps, a career in construction.
That would be the goal of Camp MAGIC, which stands for
Mentoring a Girl in Construction.
"Girls are as capable, if not more capable, of doing
as good a job as boys are," said Ashley Hawk, 11, of Pottstown.
She was buzzing with excitement, waiting to use the
spindle sander at the Northeast Regional Council of Carpenters'
apprentice-training center in Northeast Philadelphia.
Maybe, Ashley said, she'd like to be a cabinetmaker, or
join the painters' union, where an apprenticeship at the union's Finishing Trades
Institute in Philadelphia comes with 60 credits toward an associate's degree.
If the saber saws weren't so loud, the seventh grader's
comments would have been music to the ears of Maura Hesdon, general manager of
Shoemaker Construction Co. in Conshohocken.
Five years ago, Hesdon and others in the Philadelphia
chapter of the National Association of Women in Construction decided to start a
camp to introduce girls to the field.
The association's board, led by Piljo Yae, a
superintendent for Barr & Barr Inc., is made up entirely of women
executives and managers in construction.
"There are a lot more women on the managerial
side," Hesdon said, "but we're trying to get more women in the
trades."
The push comes at a time of growth for local
construction.
Between 2013 and 2015, the region saw nearly $7.4 billion
in new construction and major renovation expenditures - well above
pre-recession levels, the General Building Contractors Association of
Philadelphia said in a report released Wednesday.
That led to employment for 27,700 directly or through
spinoffs from the projects, the report said.
But not for women.
That's according to another report, prepared by two local
economic-analysis firms, Econsult Solutions Inc. and Milligan & Co. L.L.C.,
for the city's Office of Economic Opportunity and released in May.
In 2008, Philadelphia officials - concerned about the
lack of diversity in the construction trades - set goals for employing more
minorities and women on projects shepherded by the city, the report said.
The goal of 32 percent for minorities was met, with
African Americans, Hispanics, Asians, and Native Americans accounting for 38.6
percent of the workforce on city construction sites, based on data collected
between Jan. 1, 2014, and June 30, 2015.
But only 2.9 percent of the workers were women,
significantly lower than the 7 percent goal.
"It's not because we don't want them," said
Charles Brock, director of the carpenters' apprentice center. "It's
because they don't show an interest."
It may be, MAGIC camp organizers say, that the girls
simply don't know that the construction trades are available to them.
Of the 943 who took the most recent carpenters'
apprentice test, 13 were women. They accounted for five of the 415 who passed
the test, Brock said.
Typically, one in five apprentices doesn't complete the
four-year program, he said, but the women never drop out. Recently, a female
apprentice was the top student in the class.
Each day for a week, the campers - from the city and the
suburbs - go to a different union training center for hands-on activities.
On Thursday, they will visit Peco Energy Co.'s training
center, and on Friday, the week will finish with a tour of Comcast Tower II's
building site.
"I love it," said camper Taliya Carter, 17, of
Philadelphia, a rising senior at the Workshop School.
At school, she builds cars, but she'd rather work with
blueprints and construction tools.
"I can go home and patch a wall myself," she
said. "I know what to do."
Source: Philly.com
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