Women, Literacy & Construction

Banana Kelly Housing Related Enhanced
Work Experience Program

For the average young woman in the South Bronx, life is difficult and often overwhelming. Good education is scarce, drug use and crime are rampant, housing inadequate and job opportunities few. The obstacles to a productive and satisfying personal and work life are great for many, such a life is almost impossible.

Banana Kelly's Housing Related Enhanced Work Experience Program, a City works funded project, provides an alternative. It offers young women and men, ages 18 to 24 years old, an opportunity to get the education and training they want and need to advance academically, to defeat the odds of living in a chaotic environment, and to gain productive employment in the construction industry. In this intensive classroom and on-the-job. training program, these young people are involved in renovating a five-story abandoned building (to provide housing for low. income and homeless people) while they learn -about reading, writing and math skills, about developing positive work habits, about working cooperatively with others, about their communities, about themselves.

The thirty participants in Banana Kelly's HREWE program have much in common. They are all high school dropouts, they are all deeply familiar with the problems and temptations of urban life. They are all highly motivated to learn, to grow, to challenge themselves. The young women in the program represent a special set of circumstances, however: in addition to fighting against the temptation to fail, they must also fight against society's belief that women are not fit to do construction work. They must be tough enough to take on the challenge daily, defying the taunts of bosses and co-workers, who continually claim that they cannot work ''as well as a man" (and who are continually surprised). The following is an interview with Norma Samuel one of Banana Kelly's women participants, who discusses her feelings about being a woman in the construction field. [My questions are italicized].