Ventura County girls build construction skills with tiny house · Ventura County girls build construction skills with tiny house for homeless Alexa D'Angelo, Ventura County Star Published

Ventura County girls build construction skills with tinyhouse for homeless

Alexa D'Angelo, Ventura County Star Published 2:18 p.m. PT June 21, 2018 | Updated 3:17 p.m. PT June 21, 2018

Anushka Shah was a little apprehensive when she found out she was going to be building a home forsomeone, but three days into a construction camp for girls, she was putting up walls, installing insulation anddrilling like a pro.

The recent graduate of Redwood Middle School in the Conejo Valley Unified School District said she saw a flierfor the National Association of Women in Construction Girls Construction Camp and wanted to join.

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She and her sister did, and since the camp started on Monday, she’s worked alongside 20 other girls to build a tiny home. The home will be placed at theRiver Haven community in Ventura, an encampment for people who were formerly homeless that’s managed by the Turning Point Foundation.

“I knew nothing about construction,” said Anushka, 14. “I’m completely new to building, so when they said, ‘You’re building a house for someone,’ I waslike ‘No way!’”

Now she says she’s “addicted to drilling.”

Kat Meadors, front, and lead instructor Daniel Bell work on setting the rafters on a tiny house. Middle and high school girls are working this week on a constructionproject as part of a day camp at the Ventura County Office of Education Career Education Center. (Photo: JUAN CARLO/THE STAR)

“Drilling was one of the first things we did,” Anushka said. “It’s just so fun.”

The girls, ages 12 and up, learn from local professionals including Daniel Bell, a construction technology teacher at Thousand Oaks High School.

They learn the basics of building and how to be safe while working on projects. They learn how to operate different tools and how to install and usecertain materials. The goal is to empower and educate young women on the opportunities in the world of construction.

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“It is amazing to teach these girls,” Bell said. “The girls are here because they want to do this and they are motivated and they are excited to do whatever

(Photo: JUAN CARLO/THE STAR)

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it is we are going to build. They are excited to be a part of it. So they all come together and they work really well as a team and they get out there and trythings they’ve never done before.”

The young women learn about confidence, too, and are shown that construction and building isn’t just a boys’ club.

“The expression on their face of learning something new or overcoming something they didn’t think they could do before, something they thought, ‘Only aman could do because he’s strong and I’m not strong enough to do it,’” Bell said. “We show them ways to leverage things or use their hammer differentlyor use physics to overcome obstacles to show them they can do any of this stuff too; you just have to think about it differently.”

Building a path

Isis Nuno, a 13-year-old from Anacapa Middle School in the Ventura Unified School District, said she likes being able to work with other girls and learnmore about building during the camp.

“You get to build things and no boys get to take your credit,” Isis said.

She’s in her second year of the camp and said she didn’t expect it to have the impact that it’s had on her. Now, she’s considering a career in theconstruction field.

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“I always wanted to be a veterinarian or a photographer, but this camp got me thinking,” Isis said.

The program got its start in 2010 and since then has run six full camps, said Laurie Bennett of the National Association of Women in Construction. Thecamp works in partnership with the Ventura County Office of Education’s Career Education Center.

Volunteer Harv Humphrey, center, shows girls attending a construction camp how to screw a piece of wood onto the frame of the tiny house they are building. (Photo:JUAN CARLO/THE STAR)

“It’s very encouraging to see that given the opportunity, any gal can build somebody a home,” Bennett said. “We want to teach every girl how to use thesaws and the drills and give them the tools they need to build.”

Anushka working with the other girls at the camp has highlighted her love of building and engineering, and she hopes to come back to the camp nextyear.

“I love this kind of stuff,” Anushka said. “I don’t know if I’ll go into construction (after high school) necessarily, but the camp definitely opened my eyes towhat engineering could look like other than just building the blueprints, but the actual application of that.”

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‘It’s someone’s home’

The home itself will have insulation in floor, walls and ceilings. It will have windows and a thick steel door and will be painted gray with white trim. RiverHaven — which started as Ventura’s only legal, self-governing campground in 2005 — began moving away from dome structures (/story/news/local/communities/ventura/2017/11/28/river-haven-ventura-residences-near-shelf-life/860331001/) to tiny homes last year.

Other tiny homes come from Tuff Sheds, but Bennett said the structure the girls worked on is different in that it has a different kind of insulation and vinylflooring.

Suki Sir, the marketing and fund development manager at Turning Point Foundation, said the tiny home is a sign of changing times at River Haven.

“The transition out there has been incredible,” Sir said. “This has been one of the most difficult winters Ventura County has ever faced, and in the midst ofthe Thomas Fire, the landslides and all the other tragedy that was going on around us, our community came together.”

Sir said after a River Haven resident was killed in a fire, (/story/news/2018/02/21/body-found-ventura-after-fire-knocked-down-encampment/358513002/)donations started pouring in to help Turning Point Foundation move away from the dome structures at the encampment. The organization then startedbuying Tuff Sheds and moving toward structures with four walls and a roof — like the tiny house.

Girls work on the tiny house at the Ventura County Office of Education's Career Education Center in Camarillo. The girls were learning construction skills while building atiny house that will be installed at River Haven, a camp for formerly homeless people in Ventura. (Photo: JUAN CARLO/THE STAR)

Sir said the relationship with the girls’ camp started after conversations between Turning Point Foundation’s outgoing board President Nick Deitch andLisa Eklund, an industry liaison with VC Innovates, a collaborative endeavor bringing together educators, businesses and community partners to applyinnovative approaches to the education experience and seamlessly prepare future workers and leaders for the workforce

“We are so grateful to the National Association of Women in Construction; it’s really an incredible thing,” Sir said. ... Now it really had the feeling of avillage. You see all these cute little buildings; the residents love them.”

Sir said she didn’t know who would be living in the tiny home built by the girls camp, but said the house would be delivered over the weekend or onMonday.

For the students, the idea of working on a home for someone who didn’t have one was powerful.

“It does remind you that what you’re doing has to be done well and you have to make sure that it’s not just some project you’re doing for whatever; it’ssomeone’s home and you have to be aware of that because both the structural integrity and the looks of it are important,” said Kat Meadors, a 17-year-old student from Thousand Oaks High School.

Seeing it all come together was an “incredible” moment for Anushka; she almost couldn’t believe it.

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“At first it was like, ‘What is this going to turn into?’” Anushka said. “Now, it’s like, ‘Oh, my gosh; we did this; we made this.’”

Evelyn Adams nails rafters in place on a tiny house being constructed this week at camp designed to introduce girls to the construction industry. The camp is being heldin Camarillo at the Ventura County Office of Education's Career Education Center. (Photo: JUAN CARLO/THE STAR)

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Ventura County girls build construction skills with tiny house · Ventura County girls build construction skills with tiny house for homeless Alexa D'Angelo, Ventura County Star Published