When we arrived at ACCESS it was one of our primary goals to bring women onto the job site.  In larger cities around Africa there are women in construction, but in smaller towns and villages it is virtually unheard of. There is a local mentality that women are ‘delicate flowers’ but in reality they are doing all of the work to maintain and build the house, care for family, farm and cook.

During our team meetings we discussed this and developed a plan to have a training day to introduce women to construction. Grace Age, the general contractor, took the first step in bringing a young female field engineer onsite to help manage the work. Last Thursday night we met with a few local women to discuss this initiative. We worked with Zaintuni (our favorite seamstress who partners with ACCESS to train women to become seamstresses at Dream Girls) to find women who would be interested in working in construction. We set a date of March 5th (which is conveniently close to International Women’s Day) for the women to come onsite and be introduced to construction.

Five women showed up, 1 from Dream Girls and 4 cleaners from ACCESS. The guys on site trained the women and they worked side by side for the day. Several of the women committed to coming back the next day to continue training. Grace Age paid the women for this day of training. After 3 days of training, if the women wish to continue working, Grace Age will negotiate salaries with them and allow them to join the team. 

The guys onsite have been absolutely wonderful and very detailed in their training. The women have been quick to learn how to lay brick and fill the mortar joints. We’re looking forward.

ACCESS is also tagging onto this goal! They have hired a new female security guard to work at the front gate. The entire team, Grace Age and ACCESS has been supportive and helped to progress and execute this initiative. We are looking forward to continuing to develop these women’s skills and ideally introduce more women to construction.

As requested, here are some more details about this Medical Centre and how it will enrich the community –

• Train 120 nurses to work at ACCESS as well as outlying rural areas with low medical care access
• Support 76 kids in families with at least one HIV-positive member
• Expand this support to up to 700 more similar children who’ve been identified but aren’t being served
• Prevent malaria, HIV and tuberculosis from spreading through local education and awareness
• Provide maternity care
• Establish a lab center and a radiology facility
• Start an immunization program
• Reduce measles, mumps, rubella, and infant mortality by at least 10%

If you’d like to support ACCESS and Construction for Change, please follow the link here! A little bit of $$$ goes an extremely long way over here!