INDIANAPOLIS — The Latinas Welding Guild is lifting up women welders in Indianapolis, helping females breaking through glass ceilings.
The group is one of 14 local nonprofits to receive a grant from this year's United Way Social Innovation Fund.
The grants are designed to help nonprofits find solutions to community problems. Latinas Welding Guild received $143,000.
The funds will supplement intense work and skill being developed in Indy that's already blazed a trail of success.
Every week, surrounded by steel and fire, mom and daughter Maria Bautista and Maggie Rodriguez are learning to manipulate metal.
Make no mistake, this is all new to them.
It's new to everyone in the class in an art and workspace on Commerce Ave.
"Zero," Bautista said. "Yeah, we have no welding background."
But they're now changing the narrative of an industry: women becoming welders in a male-dominated field.
"It's really empowering to know that it's mostly men in the field and you're a woman that's learning," Rodriguez said.
"Oh my God, it's so good for me," Bautista added. "My God, I have a job that any man can do and I'm a woman and I'm doing it! So I feel like...powerful!"
That spark and excitement is why Consuelo Lockhart founded the Latinas Welding Guild four years ago in Indianapolis, to mentor people just like herself.
"We're a local nonprofit. We focus on providing affordable training for women who want to weld, so we primarily focus on Latinas but also other marginalized women," Lockhart said.
Lockhart is an artist born in Guatemala and raised by adoptive parents in Michigan. After earning her MFA, Lockhart went to school for welding. But she was the only woman in class.
The only woman on the job.
The only Latina.
"I wondered how many Latinas are actually in the welding industry... and I never saw any," she said. "I didn't have a mentor and I didn't have a support, so how can I do those things that I wish I had? Someone there doing for me that I can do for the other women who are going through?"
At the guild, she's surrounded by women and celebrates their culture.
Hanging from the ceiling are flags representing the countries of people who have completed a ten-week welding course: 73 women so far. Many of them are now working as welders.
"We really just want to help empower those women who have different backgrounds and really eliminate some of the barriers they might have faced if they wanted to start a career," Lockhart said.
Jonathan Garmany, one of the instructors at the Indianapolis nonprofit, said this industry has an average salary of $50,000 and it's growing because many older welders are retiring. He believes women can and should join the ranks.
The Latinas Welding Guild helps them do it, affordably. There are income-based scholarships. There's no previous education requirement. Language and gender barriers are removed. The focus is on safety, skill and female confidence.
"Now they get to see other women doing it, so it's not as intimidating. And they also know that it is possible to, you know, complete it and do it," Lockhart said.
Right now, women make up just about 5% of the welding workforce. Students like Maria and Maggie hope what they're learning at LWG helps them torch that glass ceiling and become the next success stories. They also hope to add a new twist to a tradition in their own family.
"I have to do something with my life and something that is challenging me," said Bautista, 47. "My dad used to weld. My brother welds but I never think about it. I never thought about asking him, 'Can you teach me or something?' Until this great group, then I was like, 'Wow, that's awesome!'"
Mom and daughter are forging new careers together. And when they join the workforce, they say it'll be a promise fulfilled to Consuelo Lockhart, for lifting up women in welding.
"Because you're the one who's doing all of this for Latinas, for women, actually, not just for Latinas and I'm going to make you very proud," Bautista said. "I know that I can do it and I will do it."
Find out more about the courses offered at Latinas Welding Guild, check out public workshops and learn about helping sponsor the non-profit or buying artwork they've designed by clicking here.
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