Community Partners
Making Connections: Innovative Changes
One of the magical moments of working at a non-profit is when you make a meaningful, useful, and unexpected connection. When this synthesis happens between two non-profits, it feels like community happening, the way it is meant to be.
For the second consecutive year, OTI connected with Innovative Changes for the Tradeswomen Leadership Institute. Although, I should pause to clarify, we actually work with them pretty often. On the surface, our missions seem disconnected but we send our students to them for financial planning education when entering the trades.
Innovative Changes assists low-income people build their long-term financial health. OTI is dedicated to promoting success for women in the trades through education, leadership, and mentorship. OTI also serves many low-income women for whom a career in the trades is a pathway out of poverty. Plus, as many of you who work in the trades know, there is a huge transition to make financially when you begin to work in this industry. It is hard to resist a spending splurge when money first starts coming in but it is also difficult to be prepared in the event of a layoff! Innovative Changes help tradeswomen enter and then stay in the trades when they work directly with our students and graduates and also when they present at the Tradeswomen Leadership Institute.
We were so grateful to have their volunteer, Landra Glover return on Saturday, September 26 to talk to attendees about financial planning. Last year, she was so well received that the planning committee was thrilled to have her return. OTI hopes that we can continue to grow and develop this relationship into the future.
As you may know, the Women’s Foundation of Oregon also believes in the work of both of our organizations: OTI and Innovative changes were the two winners of their 2015 Legacy Award. Thank you to WFO for supporting both of our organizations so that we can each have those magical moments of connection and furthering our missions.
– Tiffany Thompson, Advocacy Program Manager
Recap: Storytelling and Workshops
As most of you know, we started a new partnership this year with Back Fence PDX. B. Frayn Masters, Mindy Nettifee, and Liz Olufson saw the importance of tradeswomen’s stories and jumped right into creating a storytelling event for OTI! Most folks don’t think twice about how much work an event involves from planning to recruiting to donations and every other little detail. The dedicated staff at Back Fence were there for us, every single step of the way, it was the type of partnership a non-profit dreams about.
This fabulous partnership led to the development of an exciting, appealing event. Demand from the community was even higher than we had expected, Back Fence and OTI fielded dozens of calls from people trying to get tickets at the last minute. We wish that every single person could have joined us, and that is why we hope to replicate this event next year. If you missed the event, you can watch videos from each of the story tellers online:
Sarah Heidler
Laurie Suchan
Jen Netherwood
Bea Jenkins
Of course, the event would not have been such a success without the support of the tradeswomen who took a big risk to get on stage. We are so thankful to Sarah Heidler, Jen Netherwood, Laurie Suchan, Jodi Tillinghast, and Bea Jenkins. Hopefully, some of you are considering telling a story next year!
Friday night was a fun way to bond before we launched into the workshops for the Tradeswomen Leadership Institute. Tradeswomen volunteers, staff from AFSCME, the AFLCIO, and from LERC taught eight workshops for 47 women in attendance. We kicked off the morning with a tour of Benson High School focused on their trades and manufacturing training. Did you know that approximately every two years, the students at Benson design and build a house from the ground up?
Marilee McCall inspired us all with her keynote address. She opened her life to us and shared her path to becoming Mayor Pro-Tem in Woodland, Washington. Marilee was heartfelt in telling her personal journey. Now, she faces challenges regularly for being a woman in leadership but it doesn’t slow her down and she revealed her own secret for dealing with Naysayers. Thanks to Marilee (and Bea for the connection) for showing us one path to leadership.
None of this would have even been possible if it weren’t for the amazing women on our planning committee: Anjeanette Brown, Maddie Ettlin, Irais Gandarilla, Sarah Heidler, Kadence Jimenez, Bea Jenkins, Leigh Jenkins, and Jodi Tillinghast.
Thank you all so much and we look forward to an even more amazing Tradeswomen Leadership Institute in 2016!
FOR THE HEALTH & SAFETY OF TRADESWOMEN
A Collaboration Between Oregon Tradeswomen, Inc. and Therapeutic Associates East Portland Physical Therapy
Damage to the back, neck, and shoulders account for over 25% of all construction related injuries, significantly more than any other injuries experienced in the trades (Center for Protection of Workers’ Rights, 2010). Here at OTI, we strive to train women to successfully enter the construction trades with the hopes that they will have long, rewarding careers. In addition to providing classroom and hands-on training, we require students to participate in a fitness component that helps women strengthen their core muscles to prepare them for the physical demands that work in the trades requires. While fitness training is great, we also know that it is not enough to help women keep their number one tool, their bodies, safe from neck, shoulder, and back injuries that can be debilitating.
Enter Therapeutic Associates East Portland Physical Therapy! Early in 2015 the East Portland branch of Therapeutic Associates reached out to OTI with the offer of collaborating to help keep our tradeswomen safe and healthy. Clinic director Peter Dills, PT, DPT, staff therapist Sarah Stuhr, PT, DPT, FAAOMPT, and physical therapy aide Elizabeth Bilotta met with OTI staff and developed a workshop for our Trades and Apprenticeship Career Class (TACC) students that would help them become educated about workplace risk factors and injury prevention.
Peter, Sarah, and Elizabeth put on a four hour workshop on August 22, which included classroom education about risk, prevention, and what steps to take when a tradeswoman realizes she has been injured. In addition, they provided individualized training to 14 women, observing them lift and carry common objects found on construction sites, such as lumber, sheets of plywood, and table saws. The Therapeutic Associates East Portland Physical Therapy team observed TACC students’ lifting and carrying techniques, provided instruction on the mechanics of lifting/carrying and assisted them in beginning to develop safe habits to utilize on the job site. The workshop finished up with the practice of a daily stretching & foam roller recovery routines as well as instruction on techniques for self-managing minor injuries.
The class was a tremendous success. TACC students and recent graduates that attended reported that they were grateful to be receiving this training before they began to develop unsafe habits in the field. Peter, Sarah, and Elizabeth stated that they were impressed with how engaged our future tradeswomen were with both the classroom and hands-on training.
This important partnership is one that we are looking forward to continuing to build upon and fine tune for future classes and, potentially, for tradeswomen that have been in the field for a while but may not have had instruction in developing safe lifting/carrying habits. We are looking forward to another workshop for our October – December TACC students.
We are so excited to continue this work with the amazing staff at Therapeutic Associates East Portland Physical Therapy. Keeping our tradeswomen safe and healthy so they can have longevity in the field is of the utmost importance to us. So, from all of us here at OTI, a huge thank you to Peter, Sarah, and a special shout out to Elizabeth for initiating the conversation about a partnership between our organizations. We look forward to a long and fruitful relationship!
Back Fence PDX & Tradeswomen Stories
OTI is really excited for the Tradeswomen Leadership Institute (TLI) this year! The show last year, My Walk Has Never Been Average, had such a great response (sold out 400 tickets) that we wanted to build on that momentum. With this in mind, we partnered with Back Fence PDX, an amazing, nationally recognized live storytelling series. Indeed, you read that correctly, LIVE storytelling! On Friday, September 25, 2015 five tradeswomen will put aside their hardhats and brave the stage to tell true, poignant, funny, and revealing stories about their lives and experiences as women in the trades. Back Fence PDX Producers B. Frayn Masters and Mindy Nettifee will graciously be coaching the storytellers and hosting the live show!
The live storytelling event will take place at DISJECTA – 8371 N Interstate Ave, Portland, OR. The door will open at 6:30 pm with drinks and snacks available for purchase. Stories will begin at 7:30 pm. Please keep in mind that we have much more limited seating than last year and we expect that these tickets are going to sell out quickly! You can purchase them now for $15 per ticket.
Great! Now that you have your tickets, you can RSVP and share this event from Facebook. Thank you for your support! We can’t wait to see you there!
**If you are a tradeswomen, register for TLI and your ticket is included!
Oregon Tradeswomen, Women’s Bureau Hold Roundtable on Female Retention in Trades
From top left: Steve Simms, Lili Hoag, Larry S. Williams, John Gardener, Connie Ashbrook, Betty Lock, Paloma Sparks, Meghan Moyer, Pat Daniels, Tiffany Thompson, Sara Gourley
Portland-region workforce development organizations were honored to host Women’s Bureau Region X Regional Administrator Betty Lock this week for a roundtable discussion on retention of women in trades apprenticeships. The group came together to discuss a persistent and vexing problem in the construction industry: A full 65 percent of women fail to complete their apprenticeships, a rate substantially higher than men’s termination rate of 35 percent.
The robust discussion was informed by experts in the field from the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries, Worksystems, Inc., the Northwest College of Construction, Constructing Hope, Family Forward Oregon, and Oregon Tradeswomen, Inc., who convened the meeting. Among the factors that contribute to the disparity in retention rates discussed by the group were jobsites and employers that remain hostile toward women, the fact that tradeswomen are dispatched to fewer work hours than their male apprentice counterparts, and the continued lack of supportive services that are tailored to the specific needs of workers in the construction industry.
Betty Lock hears from participants about challenges faced by female apprentices in the trades
Solutions offered by the group included emphasizing accountability and enforcement on projects that fail to meet diversity hiring targets, working with contractors and employers to stimulate demand for female workers, and tailoring supportive services to suit women working in the industry that have children. Many in attendance emphasized the importance of networking, noting that women and men of color are not being mentored into a network that guarantees them more access to the jobs that help them succeed in apprenticeship. Oregon Tradeswomen’s Advocacy Program Manager also offered a summary of its work on the Green Dot bystander intervention program, which could be employed on construction jobsites to reduce harassment of female and minority workers.
We look forward to continuing this discussion with our regional partners and the Department of Labor, as well as working together to refine and implement the best of these strategies in the future. Oregon Tradeswomen wishes to thank our regional partners, Betty Lock, and the Women’s Bureau for their commitment to women in the trades and for coming together to discuss this critical issue!
Business Member Spotlight: Madden Industrial Craftsmen, Inc.
Oregon Tradeswomen, Inc. welcomes the support of the business community to help us fulfill our mission to engage more women and girls in the trades.
Madden Industrial Craftsmen, Inc. is one of our partners in this program and we thank them for their contribution to OTI. For 25 years, Madden Industrial Craftsmen has served as the premier staffing provider for industrial businesses in the Pacific Northwest, and has provided quality employment opportunities to our pool of skilled workers. Recently, owner Ken Madden posted this article on LinkedIn about the hiring challenges and solutions for the manufacturing sector.
OTI thanks the staff of Madden Industrial Craftsmen, Inc. for their support of our programming as a business membership program participant!
If you want to learn more about our business membership program, please send an email to dennise@tradeswomen.net for details on how you can be involved.
OTI Selected for Legacy Award
We are thrilled to share that OTI is one of the recipients of a Legacy Award of $25,000 from the Women’s Foundation of Oregon!
The Women’s Foundation of Oregon has a vision for Oregon where every woman and girl can thrive. This vision resonates significantly with the work and mission of OTI, which is dedicated to promoting the success for women in the trades through education, leadership, and mentorship.
The $25,000 award will greatly expand the reach of our information and messages, revealing the information about high-wage trades careers that is generally hidden or inaccessible to women, as well as enable us to better retrieve data that will show the impact of our work. This includes improving our digital communications to reach more women; produce videos sharing the opportunities to become involved with OTI; connect with girls and women of color and in rural communities to engage them in our programs; hire a part-time outreach coordinator; and improve our infrastructure to better improve our services for girls and women
Terri, Connie & Dennise at the Women’s Foundation of Oregon celebration event
Oregon Tradeswomen, Inc. thanks the membership of the Women’s Foundation of Oregon for this generous gift to help us do more in empowering women and girls in the trades!
Multnomah Bar Foundation Awards Grant to OTI
Oregon Tradeswomen, Inc. (OTI) received a $4,000 grant from the Multnomah Bar Foundation to support components of OTI’s TOOLS program (Tradeswomen Organized for Outreach, Leadership & Support) – a program aspiring to advance tradeswomen’s understanding of civic responsibility, to improve tradeswomen’s understanding of the legislative process, and build their leadership capacity overall. OTI’s TOOLS program provides voter registration, voter education, civic engagement, and advocacy and legislative work, so that tradeswomen are included in the civic and legislative process on issues that affect working class tradeswomen.
Today, OTI’s current class of pre-apprenticeship students are participating in OTI’s annual Construction Equity Day event where students visit the State Capitol Building to meet with legislators, observe the legislative session, and learn more about how new laws are enacted in our state.
“We are immensely thankful to Multnomah Bar Foundation for their investment in our work with tradeswomen,” said Tiffany Thompson, Advocacy Program Manager for OTI. “These funds will help educate tradeswomen about the direct impact civic engagement can have on OTI’s work and on the Construction Industry at large. We will also be able to instill a more relevant understanding of the role of the legislative process, and help tradeswomen feel competent and knowledgeable enough to be meaningfully engaged in government, law, leadership, and elections,” Thompson added.
Founded in 2005, the Multnomah Bar Foundation (MBF) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. The MBF has established two dedicated funds: the Civic Education Fund (formerly the MBA 100th Anniversary Community Gift Fund) and Multnomah CourtCare. For more information about the MBF visit their website.
Oregon Tradeswomen, Inc. thanks the Multnomah Bar Foundation for its generous support of our programming!
A New, Community Partnership: Fighting Fillies!
Oregon Tradeswomen, Inc. is pleased to announced a new community partnership with the Portland Fighting Fillies!
The all-female team is dedicated to promoting the sport of women’s football. This year, the team began its sixth season and will be playing in four home games. The group is part of the Women’s Football Alliance that was founded in 2008 and plays in the Northwest Division – the team was the division champion in 2010 and 2011! Their next home game is against the Portland Shockwave and is taking place on May 16 at 6:30 pm in Hillsboro.
As part of our partnership, OTI will be attending the home games so be sure to keep an eye our on Facebook wall to score free tickets!
Here is a great video capturing one of their practices:
MANUFACTURING ROUNDTABLE EVENT
Overview
The manufacturing industry is projected to need to replace more than 30,000 workers in the next decade, and increasing diversity within the industry is critical to ensure companies have access to the skilled, talented labor required for this important sector of our local economy. Manufacturing in Portland is comprised of more than 107,000 jobs, making up 11% of Portland’s total workforce. In Oregon, overall, 26% of our GDP comes from manufacturing.
On Wednesday, April 22nd, Bank of America and Oregon Tradeswomen, Inc. convened a group of 22 manufacturing industry executives to introduce them to OTI’s forthcoming Women in Metals & Manufacturing program and to learn from them what they are looking for in an entry level worker.
During the 90 minute discussion, OTI learned firsthand from representatives from local manufacturing firms about 4 broad buckets of work to address prior to launching the new Women in Metals & Manufacturing program:
1) Input on the curriculum & framework of this new manufacturing program
2) Ideas about how to recruit for the program, create awareness, and market the program
3) How local manufacturing employers can be a part of the program with things like site visits, guest speakers & hands-on training opportunities,
4) How to facilitate connections to women role-models who are successful in their manufacturing careers
Oregon Tradeswomen also learned more about what skills are necessary for entry level employment in the industry and career advancement, and overwhelmingly, those industry representatives echoed the following skills:
- Mechanical aptitude
- Safety minded
- Ability to learn and apply learning
- Keen attention to detail
- Great attitude / Enthusiastic
- Teamwork Oriented
- Respectful
- Driven
The Structure of the Women in Metals & Manufacturing program:
The Women in Metals & Manufacturing program will consist of two parts:
- A one day, hands-on orientation session which introduces women to metals and manufacturing careers, pathways into these careers, and a hands-on activity designed to allow women to experience activities common in manufacturing jobs in order for participants to assess their level of interest and/or their ability to keep pace with the demands of a manufacturing career.
- A two-week program modeled on Oregon Tradeswomen, Inc.’s nationally recognized
pre-apprenticeship program, Women in Metals & Manufacturing will offer:- Education and training in shop math
- Blueprint reading
- Worksite expectations
- Developing a manufacturing resume
- Hands-on training activities
- Mentoring from women who are successful in a manufacturing career
- Field trips to local manufacturing companies
- Hands-on training in workshop safety and the safe operation of manual/computerized machines and precision tools
- Graduates will receive job placement assistance and vocational case management services upon program completion.
Timeline:
Oregon Tradeswomen, Inc.’s program staff will be distilling the feedback we received at this roundtable to help inform the curriculum of our Women in Metals & Manufacturing program. The new program is slated to launch in August 2015 with an orientation, and then the 2 week intensive training will be offered in early September.
Input Survey:
Oregon Tradeswomen, Inc. welcomes additional feedback from the manufacturing industry to help inform our forthcoming program. If you would like to contribute, please download our survey and return it to:
Dennise M. Kowalczyk
Oregon Tradeswomen, Inc.
3934 NE Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd., Ste.# 101
Portland OR 97212