What is Women Build? Women Build is a dedicated time for women to join together on the build site – surrounded by other women. Women Build is not about excluding men; it’s about including women by providing a female-friendly work site that challenges women to learn new skills and empowers them take on cooperative leadership roles – all while helping to build affordable housing in our community.
Our goal for this event is threefold: Raise money to build the house, increase awareness of the need for affordable housing, and empower women to learn new building skills & discover what they can truly do. You can be part of this effort. Share this initiative with your friends and networks and work with us in creating a community where everyone has a decent place to live.
Building together: You will find women & allies representing all age groups, social & cultural backgrounds, professions, and faiths serving together on the Women Build construction site. We hope you’ll join us!
September 15th – October 23rd (Wed-Sat): Help build a house! Under the supervision of our general contractor, work alongside other women on a female-friendly build site to help build a home for a future Habitat homeowner.
Join independently or as a group. You can gather up to 8 friends and work side-by-side with future homeowners. Under the guidance of our skilled construction staff, you’ll learn new skills, make new friends, and, most importantly, help provide families in our community with a decent home to call their own.
No experience is necessary, just a desire to help and to learn something new. Please wear work appropriate clothes – dress for the weather and wear closed-toed shoes. You may bring your own tools if you’d like, but Habitat will provide everything you’ll need for the day. Habitat volunteers perform a variety of critical tasks, including painting, framing, roofing, and installing flooring, cabinets, doors, and windows – always within your comfort level.
Dates: September 15 – October 23 (Wed-Sat)
Shift Times: 8:00 am-11:45 am and 1:00 pm -4:00 pm
Cost: $50 per person
Questions? Email our Development Director
Women Build is our biggest fundraising event of the year, and our sponsors are critical to making the event a success. We welcome sponsorship from businesses, community groups, faith groups, foundations, and private citizens. To learn more about becoming a sponsor, email our Director of Development. Read below to learn the benefits of each level of serving as a Women Build sponsor.
Already know you’d like to support this beloved event? Let us know!
We’re deeply grateful to our 2026 Women Build sponsors
Women Build, now an international effort, started right here in North Carolina when the Charlotte Habitat affiliate organized the first event in 1991. It grew to other states and nations, eventually becoming a formal department and initiative of Habitat for Humanity International in 1998.
Habitat Alamance initially offered Women Build in the 1990s, and then our current, annual Women Build event launched in 2015. Every year since, the tradition has grown – engaging and empowering more women. What began as a week-long event has grown to an entire month offering two shifts each day. And we’re still growing.
Rosalynn Carter
When former first lady Rosalynn Carter volunteered at her first Habitat build in 1984, she was sure she wouldn’t be much of a handywoman.
“I told Jimmy that I would help with the food, that I was not going to do hammering,” she says. But that’s not what the day had in store for her.
“Jimmy asked me and some other women to pry up some linoleum from the floor,” she says. “Just before we finished, somebody brought some boards for us to nail down. The first day, I was hammering.”
Her ever-deepening commitment to Habitat would go on to change her life, as well as the lives of hundreds of homeowners across the globe. “You come to know the homeowner and love the homeowner and their family. It makes you aware and care about the people and hope they have good lives and good homes. It has made me a better person.”
