IT STARTED as a challenge for male construction workers but the downturn in the building industry means that, for the first time, women will outnumber men in Niall Mellon’s latest house-building project in South Africa.
This week some 300 women will be included in the 500-strong group of volunteers leaving for Cape Town to build homes in the township of Mbekweni in Paarl. Some volunteers have already left for South Africa, while the majority will leave Ireland on Thursday.
The Niall Mellon Township Trust’s building blitz aims to build 75 houses in one week. Director of operations Dominic Loughran said the downturn in the construction sector was having an impact on the number of skilled tradespeople volunteering for the work. Participants must raise €5,000 to go on the week-long trip and, while many people fundraise, he said construction workers would often have made large contributions themselves.
“Now people are out of work, or maybe down to three-day weeks, so it’s more difficult to do something like this.” He said taking a week out of job hunting to do charity work abroad was not an option for everyone.
Traditionally, about 80 per cent of the group would have been tradespeople. That fell to 60 per cent last November, and now just 20 per cent of volunteers have construction skills.
Mr Loughran said the charity was employing about 200 South African construction workers to provide the necessary mix of skilled and unskilled workers.
“So a lot of Irish volunteers will be labouring for them, which will be a major cultural change,” he said. “I think this is going to be terrific.”
Unskilled volunteers could take part in a wide range of activities including painting, labouring and store management.
The trust has built more than 11,000 houses in South Africa since the work began in 2002, and this week’s crop of volunteers will bring to more than 5,500 the total number of participants in the project.
Despite the economic downturn, Mr Mellon said the appetite shown by volunteers to help others was as strong as ever. A number of construction workers who have lost their jobs since they signed up for the trip would still travel to South Africa. “Many of our volunteers remark that no matter what else happens in their lives at home, they are determined and committed to helping others,” he said.
Mr Mellon said he was delighted to see so many women taking part. “There is nothing more rewarding than to see, at the end of a very hard-working week, families being handed over keys to their own homes with running water and electricity. We are delighted and very proud that this year there will be such a large participation of women to witness the women from the townships of Mbekweni moving into their own homes.”
