STORY BY BENJAMIN LERNER
PHOTOGRAPHY
COURTESY VWW
Vermont
Works For
Women
Equity,
Empowerment,
& Excellence
When Ronnie Sandler founded
the Step Up women’s vocational
training program in St. Johnsbury,
Vermont in 1985, her goal was simple: She
wanted to teach Vermont’s female workers
valuable trade skills to set them up for
success in traditionally male-dominated
industries. With the help of the Vermont
Department of Education, she used the
knowledge she had acquired during her
carpentry career to create a comprehensive
and holistic technical education
course.
Two years after launching Step Up, Ronnie
partnered with two other Vermont-based
women to form the Northern New England
Trades Women’s association (NNETW) in
1987. Over the next two decades, NNETW
facilitated employment readiness
programs for women throughout the state
of Vermont, as well as cross-state
collaborative efforts with bordering
counties in New Hampshire.
In 2007, NNETW rebranded itself as
Vermont Works for Women (VWW).
Operating as a nonprofit organization,
VWW currently offers a variety of programs
and services that enable women and
gender non-conforming persons to learn
valuable work skills and self-advocacy
strategies.
VWW’s “Rosie’s Girls” program introduces
middle school girls and gender
non-conforming youth to nontraditional
career fields through a series of immersive
hands-on learning experiences. A
socioemotionally integrative “Power
Skills” component helps participants build
self-confidence in a safe and supportive
setting. A specialized career exploration
event known as “Girl’s Tech” brings middle
school-aged participants who express
interest in technology-oriented trades
together to learn from industry
professionals. The program centers around
trades such as automotive engineering,
welding, and computer science.
Events such as the “Women Can Do”
career-immersion conference create
unique educational platforms where high
school-aged girls and gender nonconforming
youth can experience a variety
of different trades and professions firsthand.
Female professionals from a wide
spectrum of nontraditional fields including
skilled trades and STEM disciplines
(Science, Technology, Engineering, and
Mathematics) serve as inspiring mentors
and instructors for conference attendees.
According to VWW Executive Director
Rhoni Basden, some of the instructors are
former program participants themselves.
Rhoni says that she has “seen participants
that started out in the ‘Rosie’s Girls’
program come back and become great
mentors. A lot of women who have gone
through some of our adult programs have
also gotten involved in our youth programs
as a mentor. It works both ways. We’re
working hard to make those pathways
even easier as we move forward.”
VWW’s diverse array of programs for adult
women help to prepare female
Vermonters for the challenges that they
face while searching for sustainable
employment. The “Trailblazers” program
gives women and gender non-conforming
persons interested in pursuing a career in
the fields of energy or construction the
opportunity to develop specialized job
skills and attain valuable certifications.
Over the course of a 10-week training
program, attendees receive hands-on
training from National Center for
Construction Education and Research
(NCCER) certified female instructors, as
well as OSHA-10 certification and NCCER
core curriculum certification.
Program Manager Missy Mackin says that
one of the best things about the “Trailblazers”
program is “a mentoring system
where women who have worked in the
trades in Vermont for a long time connect
with the participants. We also have a job
fair towards the end of the program where
we connect employers with participants
who are looking for jobs. We provide
support to our participants from the
moment that they first enter the program
through the job search process and
beyond. I like to say that ‘Trailblazers’ is
the program that keeps on giving. The
women who graduate from our program
can come back to us at any time for
whatever services they need. We call
companies to see if they are looking for
any potential workers. Sometimes the
companies call us to see if we have
anyone available to work an open position.
It’s been incredibly encouraging to see
companies of all sizes contact us to offer
our program participants opportunities
for employment. It’s a promising sign of
positive change.”
VWW also affects positive change through
the Incarcerated Women’s Program,
which prepares institutionalized women
in Vermont to rejoin the workforce upon
release. The program provides crucial work
opportunities for female inmates through
an innovatively-structured employment
outreach program.
Program Manager Heather Newcomb
finds that “Incarcerated women seeking
to return to the workforce face a series of
frustratingly-difficult logistical challenges.
This is largely due to the lack of
communication between various state-run
social programs and correctional bureaucracies.
The barriers created by this lack of
effective communication prevent
incarcerated women from effectively
accessing the programs that are most
needed upon release. There are many
challenges with agency coordination.
Because of this, we spend a good amount
of time helping the women we work with
navigate the resources that are available to
them. We work with employers to provide
support to their employees who have a
history of criminal justice involvement.
Most of the employers that we work with
are progressively-minded businesses such
as BCorp certified corporations. Some
employers will accept applications for
employment prior to release. We have had
employers come to the facility and perform
interviews. One even extended a job offer
prior to an inmate’s release. It’s
incredible to see these women being
given opportunities, but there is still a lot
44 VERMONT MAGAZINE