Student-built tiny home gets big reception
Though some high school students may be working on graduation speeches that will speak on building a future for themselves, a class of girls at Carondelet High School in Concord already has built a future for someone else.
The Engineering for Social Good class at the all-girls Catholic high school spent its school year researching, designing and constructing a small home that on Thursday was turned over to an organization that helps migrant workers in the area. The tiny home, dedicated with a ceremony at the school, is destined for Frog Hollow Farm in Brentwood to become the home of a farm worker family.
Marivel Mendoza of Hijas del Campo said the group already had picked out a family — one of 300 it helps support. She praised the students and the school, saying their commitment to the project will benefit the dedicated, resilient and hardworking people who live with food and housing insecurities.
“You are changing lives,” Mendoza told the students and teachers.
The idea for building a tiny house — 20 feet by 8 feet by 11 feet — came from class instructor Chris Walsh, who also serves as the director of the school's Jean Hofmann Center for Innovation.
Walsh, who was assisted by math teacher Kristina Levesque, said he wasn't sure how the idea would be accepted, and even he had doubts.
“I thought it was too crazy, too difficult, too expensive,” Walsh told the small crowd that gathered for the ribbon cutting. “But everyone went for it in the true Carondelet spirit.”
Walsh said the high school probably wasn't the first to build a tiny home, but it might be the first all-girl high school to build
one, and to construct it from steel instead of wood, earning the 30-member team the nickname Women of Steel.
Ava Ribando, a senior at the high school, said she was proud to have been part of project that was based on the Catholic principles of charity, and that it gave her an experience she didn't think she'd get anywhere else.
More than the accomplishment of constructing the home, doing everything from the bolting the frame together to installing the floors, windows, plumbing and wiring, working on the house created lasting memories and connections, Ribando said.
Carondelet Principal Kevin Cushing told the girls they had much to be proud of.
“You didn't create a building,” Cushing said. “You created a conduit of hope and a place of safety. You created an opportunity for dignity.”
The team still has a few more things to do on the house before it is taken to Brentwood, fully furnished with appliances, move-in ready. Mendoza said her organization is overjoyed with its first house, and said she hopes it eventually will lead to a tiny village.