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More than 75 women from across Rutherford County volunteered, including Lowe's Heroes employee volunteers, on a Rutherford County Habitat for Humanity construction site in recognition of National Women Build Week which was May 2-10.
"Rutherford County Habitat for Humanity and women throughout our county have been participating in Women Build for seven years and it continues to grow each year. We had 62 people signed up to build on Saturday but ended up with more than 75. It's always a plus to have more involved than you expected. We had volunteers working on other aspects of Women Build from coordinating the event to helping with lunch on the day of the build so we had almost 100 volunteers total for Women Build 2015," said Sheila Cain, resource development associate.
The volunteers worked to put vinyl siding on the home of the Annette Birriel family as well as
laying laminate flooring in the home of the Brooke Lake family. Rama Barbee family's home had volunteers working on subflooring and raised a wall. All the Habitat partner families were there and helped work on their houses. They also had other family members and friends working alongside them. Rutherford County's Women Roofers were again part of Women Build and replaced a roof on a house.
Volunteers were also on hand to plant a community garden. "This was the perfect opportunity to get youth involved in Women Build. There are age restrictions for being on the construction site and using power tools yet we have youth that want to help somehow. The garden helped us to make that happen for them. We had many homeowner's children helping as well and all involved enjoyed that and learning about planting, gardening," Cain said.
Habitat's Women Build program recruits, educates and inspires women to build and advocate for simple, decent and affordable homes in their communities. Since the program was created in 1998, more than 2,200 homes have been built in partnership with low-income families using Women Build crews. More than 52,000 women from all 50 states have volunteered at the six previous Women Build Week events.
Lowe's helped launch National Women Build Week in 2008 and each year provides the support of Lowe's Heroes and conducts how-to clinics at stores to teach volunteers construction skills. Lowe's donated $1.75 million to this year's National Women Build Week, including a $5,000 store gift card to Rutherford County Habitat for Humanity as part of a new five-year partnership with Habitat that will bring Lowe's total contributions to more than $63 million since 2003. In celebration of this renewed partnership, Lowe's and Habitat launched Hammers for Habitat, a volunteer initiative inviting men and women across America to give one day to help make the dream of homeownership a reality for a family in their community. To learn more, visit
Habitat.org/Lowes.
"As part of National Women Build Week, we're encouraging women across America to raise a hammer to help create safe and affordable housing in partnership with local families," said Joan Higginbotham, Lowe's director of community relations. "We thank our Lowe's Heroes and the thousands of volunteers who have helped strengthen communities throughout the country this past week."
Stefan Mayse from Tri-City Concrete made a delivery to the Habitat build site in his concrete truck. Stefan's truck is new to Tri-City and has the Rutherford County Habitat for Humanity logo on the concrete drum. "We are so grateful that Steve Barnes would advertise for Habitat and for Stefan for putting the logo on his truck. Doing it in this manner reaches a lot more people simply because they do such a good business, their trucks are on the road all the time," said Kim Freeman, Habitat executive director.
