Mary Hawkins had a dream. Not only did she want to be a homeowner, but she wanted to BUILD her own home. Having a learning disability that has affected her capacity to read and write, working extra-hard to succeed because of it, and watching housing prices go \u201csky high,\u201d she believed it was impossible to realize that two-fold dream.<\/p>\n
Mary, though, is smart and persistent. Those strengths, a very supportive friend, and a Facebook post, have helped the trajectory of her life to change! She obtained her long-awaited high school diploma, attended a construction trades job fair, talked with a major mechanical contractor, and started a plumbing apprenticeship there in May 2019. She\u2019s been in work Heaven and will graduate in May 2023!<\/p>\n
Mary\u2019s already won a coveted award from the National Association of Women in Construction (NAWIC) and has installed the exterior plumbing for a Habitat house. To her, the award felt \u201clike an Oscar\u201d and she \u201cwished\u201d to do more on the house.<\/p>\n
Talk about a wish \u2013 and a dream \u2013 come true! She IS building her own Habitat home and others, now that she\u2019s a Habitat Seminole-Apopka Future Homebuyer! (Her sister\u2019s Facebook post encouraged her to apply for her Habitat journey, which began in February 2022.)<\/p>\n
\u201cWords can\u2019t describe how I feel,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019m excited to have Women Build constructing my house because I\u2019m a WOMAN IN CONSTRUCTION! That\u2019s what we women stand for \u2013 we\u2019re VERY powerful!\u201d<\/p>\n
That woman power<\/em> extends beyond the desire to build and buy her house. Mary wants to be a part of building up her entire community and truly hopes to \u201cgive back\u201d to the youth. Come ask her how!<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Mary Hawkins had a dream. Not only did she want to be a homeowner, but she wanted to BUILD her own home. Having a learning disability that has affected her capacity to read and write, working extra-hard to succeed because of it, and watching housing prices go \u201csky high,\u201d she believed it was impossible to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":622,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"give_campaign_id":0,"iawp_total_views":11,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-647","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/habitatseminoleapopka.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/647","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/habitatseminoleapopka.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/habitatseminoleapopka.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/habitatseminoleapopka.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/habitatseminoleapopka.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=647"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/habitatseminoleapopka.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/647\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/habitatseminoleapopka.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/habitatseminoleapopka.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/habitatseminoleapopka.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/habitatseminoleapopka.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}