The First Buildher Woman

Our motivation to create Buildher came from Helen Nyambura Kamau, a truly inspiring woman we met in 2013. Helen represents many of the women we work with today – a young single mother without a full education and only a sporadic low income. Helen is a driven, optimistic and powerful woman. She spotted an opportunity to change her situation, asking to volunteer and learn new skills on a construction site being run by Buildher’s partner organisation: the design-build social enterprise, Orkidstudio. Here, she was offerred paid employment and quickly recruited other women to the project. Those women became the most skilled, hard-working, reliable and trusted members of the team. Most of all, they gave us the spark to disrupt entrenched systems and inspire women in the unlikeliest of places: construction.