Women Play a Key Role in Construction Project at Glasgow Place of Worship

Miranda Espinosa is taking a break from her job pouring and finishing concrete at her family’s construction business. With her gear packed, she has traveled almost 200 miles to Glasgow to donate her time and experience on a different kind of project.

The Miles City resident has volunteered her skills for several weeks on the remodel of the Glasgow Kingdom Hall of Jehovah’s Witnesses. Espinosa has a wide variety of construction and office skills, and she relies on both to work on the project as much as she can.

“I work anywhere on the site where help may be needed,” Espinosa said, who tackles tasks ranging from receiving shipments of materials and talking with suppliers to working in drywall and HVAC.

While Espinosa is skilled in concrete and general construction, she is always excited to learn something new. “There may be times when I learn a new skill. It is a joy to be taught a skill and see how patient others are in helping to train new ones.”

Women represent only 3.9 percent of tradespeople working in construction nationally, according to an Institute for Women’s Policy Research report that cites U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data. By contrast, the Witnesses’ construction projects regularly see large percentages of female volunteers, both skilled and unskilled.

“We would be lost without our vast number of women volunteers,” said Robert Hendriks, U.S. spokesperson for Jehovah’s Witnesses. “Their attention to detail, high quality of work, and infectious enthusiasm are all vital to the success of our building projects.”

When the Witnesses moved their headquarters from Brooklyn, N.Y., upstate to the town of Warwick in recent years, the construction project drew some 27,000 volunteers from around the country, 25 percent of whom were women — like Kierstin Golec of Huntington, Ma.

Golec and fellow female volunteers were assigned to site excavation efforts within days of arriving on the project. They received intensive training to operate heavy equipment right alongside the men on the crew. Golec vividly recalls the first time she came face to face with the dump truck she’d soon be driving.

“I approached the vehicle, and the tires were taller than me!” she said. “It was a surreal, humbling, and exciting experience.”

Reflecting on the three years she spent volunteering on the build, Golec says she won’t forget the confidence shown in her and other female volunteers.

“All of us, men and women, were trained so we could be involved to the fullest extent possible,” she said. “They displayed a lot of trust in us equally, and I’m forever grateful to have been treated with such dignity.”

Espinosa was another of the volunteers to work at Warwick. She traveled to New York on three separate occasions for the project. “It was amazing to see so many workers from different states with different skills and abilities working together,” Espinosa said. “I made so many new friends working there, and I still keep in touch with many of them.”

She expressed similar sentiment about the Glasgow project, “It’s been a highlight working shoulder to shoulder with so many wonderful people here in Glasgow,” Espinosa said. “I feel like what we are accomplishing will positively affect people for years to come.”

In addition to volunteering on projects in New York and Montana, Espinosa has worked on Kingdom Hall construction projects in Wyoming, Idaho, and Washington. “Everyone cooperates with each other, and the atmosphere is friendly and kind,” she said.

Volunteers have come to the Glasgow site from across the state of Montana, and from as far away as Alaska. The project is scheduled for completion by the end of July 2023.

For more information about Jehovah’s Witnesses, their history, beliefs, and construction activities, visit their official website, jw.org, with content available in more than 1,000 languages.