Kathleen, we actually have quite a few woman involved with shop; it was started by 3 woman. What we've been lacking are volunteers that feel confident enough in their skills to lead others. It's funny because since I sent my email I think I've found 3 woman mechanics who are interested in restarting our program. Hopefully it will all work out.
Holding special trainings for volunteer mechanics is also a great idea. We're just getting a class curriculum for the public together. If only we could clone our core volunteers and add 24 more hours to each day, we'd really get somewhere.
Your point about knowing limitations is a great one for any volunteer mechanic to follow.
James
On Fri, Apr 3, 2009 at 5:36 AM, Kathleen Banville kathleenmachine@gmail.com wrote:
Hi James
yes its true sometimes its harder to find the volunteers to make the W&T hours possible. the org can ask itself why so few women are involved in the shop. obviously you need to bring more in. a way to do this could be get some of the core female mechanics to have a bike mechanic workshop night for women only. train some new volunteers to do basic repairs.
also we had a discussion about how we don't have to be able to fix every thing that comes into the shop. if we don't know how to do it, we can look it up in the bike mechanic handbook. if we still don't feel comfortable approaching the problem, we should reject it rather than make mistakes. that's a smart move, not a failure.
recruiting is also a good idea. approach other women or trans organizations, offer for them to fix their members bikes for free (if you usually charge) or some other trade.
since we've introduced women and trans hours, we've advertised it but mostly its spread word of mouth. we've had many many new volunteers and customers as a result of it. do you usually have trouble staffing Bike Farm, or is it only for W&T hours?
good luck! kathleen