RICHARD WALKER / STAR-BULLETIN
Volunteer Masami Osada, left, and Pogi Holmes of Wahine
Builders peer through a window as Clarice Cornett, president
of Wahine Builders, preps another pane at the Habitat for
Humanity house on Pele Street in Honolulu.

Women team up
on dream project

A crew of volunteers joins
Wahine Builders in constructing
a Habitat for Humanity home

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By Lisa Asato
Star-Bulletin

A two-story duplex is taking shape just makai of the H-1 freeway across from Punchbowl Crater.

When the house is finished, 61-year-old Than Neuov, a Cambodian who fled the Khmer Rouge in 1978, will own his own home for the first time in his life.

He and his family will share the duplex with Chazz and Kristine Esposito, 25, who was a single mother on welfare five years ago.

The home is an effort of First Ladies Build, a program of Honolulu Habitat for Humanity, which gets low-income families into their own homes.

The muscle behind the project is coming from a score of volunteers that show up on Saturdays and are led by the Wahine Builders, an almost all-female contracting company -- the exception being electrician Mark Arthur, "our one kane-wahine," joked contractor Clarice Cornett.

Cornett said that even in the year 2001 some people still doubt that a largely female crew could do the job.

"If we don't see women building, we don't think women can build," she said. "And then you're depriving women of a great opportunity. Few industries let you go in as an apprentice and in less than a decade let you be a contractor fulfilling your own destiny."

Wahine Builders, a general and electrical contracting company, also has used the Pele Street site as a training ground for women interested in breaking into the field.

Five trainees from the Women's Correctional Center are on track to become licensed carpenters and electricians, she said.

As for the Espositos and the Neuovs, they also have been part of the Saturday crew. Both families are putting in 500 hours of "sweat equity" as a requirement of receiving the home.

Neuov's daughter Sokha said: "Both my parents have been through a lot. And for them to be able to own their own home when they don't make enough to make a down payment, it's a dream come true."