Submitted by United Way of Central Indiana
Inside the shop, sparks flew.
Women aimed welding guns at hunks of metal, their guns sizzling and popping. Helmets shielded their eyes.
One evening in April, an instructor timed the women as they practiced for their upcoming welding certification test. Now at the end of their coursework, the dozen women would soon be joining 87 others who have completed training at the Latinas Welding Guild – nearly 100 welders in all.
Consuelo Lockhart founded the nonprofit in 2017 to create a safe space for women to learn to weld and break into the male-dominated industry. Less than 6 percent of welders in the U.S. are women, according to 2019 data from the U.S. Department of Labor.
“The industry itself is still kind of backwards. There is a lot of harassment and racism that happens within the workforce,” said Lockhart, the guild’s executive director. “Our goal is to improve that and make a positive impact on the industry itself, while also being able to give women the opportunity to start a career for themselves.”
Latinas Welding Guild received $143,000 from United Way’s Social Innovation Fund in November 2021, one of 14 organizations awarded grants.
The funding has allowed the guild to pilot an equitable employment program, Lockhart said. She’s building a team of advisors who will help identify healthy and respectful workplaces. The goal is to create a pipeline, training and certifying women in welding and then placing them in work environments that have human resources departments and harassment policies in place.
Latinas Welding Guild will continue to support women after they’ve started working, and if an issue arises, work with the welder and the employer to ensure the problem is resolved, Lockhart said.
“Latinas Welding Guild shows us that investing in innovation in our communities has the ability to create meaningful work for women across varying backgrounds and disrupt inequities of the past,” said Jonathan Jones, United Way’s senior director of social innovation. “As we continue to invest in innovative approaches, we create new possibilities for the future while broadening horizons of our neighbors.”
Inside the guild’s Indianapolis shop, flags representing some of the women’s countries hang from the ceiling: Colombia, El Salvador, Mexico, Peru.
Lockhart was born in Guatemala and raised in Michigan. She fell in love with welding while first learning the process for a project in art school.
Today, her nonprofit offers 10-week courses that cover welding basics and prepare participants for certification testing. The guild has placed about a dozen women into jobs, including fabrication work and at structural steel facilities.
A functional artist, Lockhart has also mentored women on how to build proposals, select materials, measure, cut, fit, weld, finish and install: “They’ve been able to see the entire process.”
The guild aims to help low- to moderate-income women, with scholarships available.
Graciela Suarez discovered the Latinas Welding Guild by chance three years ago when she met Lockhart at a library event. She began as a student, and now she’s a Spanish-language welding instructor and teacher’s assistant there.
Suarez said careers in welding and mechanics are viewed unequally – more for men than for women. In addition to teaching the welders the technical aspects of the work, Suarez teaches them they have a community of other women working in the field.
“… Above all they learn to have self-confidence … to know that they can achieve and do this job,” Suarez said in Spanish, with Lockhart translating.
This story appeared in United Way of Central Indiana’s 2021-2022 annual report. For more stories of impact, view the full report online.