Submitted by Jehovah’s Witnesses United States of America.
With her hot pink, hi-vis vest and her hard hat under her arm, Ginger Baird laces up her work boots and heads out to haul concrete and help with demolition on a chilly Tuesday morning.
Baird, a resident of Eastsound, takes a few days off every month from her and her husband’s stone and tile business to sleep in a travel trailer on the mainland. This has been her routine since August when she signed up to volunteer on a construction site for a Kingdom Hall remodel, where Jehovah’s Witnesses will meet in Stanwood.
“I volunteer on these projects as much as I can,” Baird said. “Learning new things from others is always fun, and I feel good when I am able to accomplish something and say, ‘Hey! I can do this!’”
Women represent only 3.9% of tradespeople working in construction nationally, according to an Institute for Women’s Policy Research report that cites U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data.
By contrast, the Witnesses’ construction projects regularly see large percentages of female volunteers, both skilled and unskilled.
“We would be lost without our vast number of women volunteers,” said Robert Hendriks, U.S. spokesperson for Jehovah’s Witnesses. “Their attention to detail, high quality of work and infectious enthusiasm are all vital to the success of our building projects.”
When the Witnesses headquarters in Brooklyn, New York, moved upstate to the town of Warwick in recent years, the construction project drew some 27,000 volunteers from around the country, 25% of whom were women — like Kierstin Golec of Huntington, Massachusetts.
Golec and fellow female volunteers were assigned to site excavation efforts within days of arriving on the project. They received intensive training to operate heavy equipment right alongside the men on the crew. Golec vividly recalls the first time she came face to face with the dump truck she’d soon be driving.
“I approached the vehicle, and the tires were taller than me!” she said. “It was a surreal, humbling and exciting experience.”
Reflecting on the three years she spent volunteering on the build, Golec says she won’t forget the confidence shown in her and other female volunteers.
“All of us, men and women, were trained so we could be involved to the fullest extent possible,” she said. “They displayed a lot of trust in us equally, and I’m forever grateful to have been treated with such dignity.”
Baird expressed a similar sentiment about the Stanwood Kingdom Hall project. “Others shared their appreciation and gratitude for my contribution. I did demolition, worked on the set-up crew, built trusses and did flagging for heavy equipment. I really enjoyed being taught in all the avenues they needed.”
Over 450 volunteers are enrolled to build the Stanwood site. Workers include locals from Washington and ones visiting from as far away as Hawaii, New York, Alaska and Colorado. The remodel is scheduled for completion in December of this year.
For more information about Jehovah’s Witnesses, their history, beliefs and construction activities, visit their official website, jw.org, with content available in more than 1,000 languages.
