For Mia Vermillion, her involvement with Skagit Women Build started with music.

Vermillion studied vocal performance, but music became a smaller part of her life when her children were born. By 2007, she was ready to turn her focus back to music and find a way to become active with her community.

“I’d come out of raising a family and being a wife primarily for the last 25 years, and I really wanted to find my other half in the world,” Vermillion said.

What she found was a way to combine her love of music with her need to support the community through Skagit Women Build.

Skagit Women Build is the newest arm of Skagit Habitat for Humanity, a nonprofit group that builds and rehabilitates affordable housing with the help of homeowners and donated labor and materials. Skagit Women Build’s aim is to bring women together, train them in construction skills and build Habitat houses.

Skagit is one of many Women Build projects throughout the United States. The local group has experienced a massive amount of growth since it was formed in September, and counts 287 volunteers.

The group collects donations and will put on a benefit concert this month, all to galvanize women to get involved in their community, Vermillion said.

Vermillion has organized and will be the featured performer in The Heart of Women Concert on Sunday, Sept. 14, at Maple Hall in La Conner. In October, the women will break ground on their first home in Sedro-Woolley.

Habitat Executive Director Wayne Wegner said the group’s volunteer pool is nothing less than extraordinary.

“In the world of Habitat for Humanity, it’s mind-boggling what they’ve done,” Wegner said. “Even in Seattle they didn’t have that many (volunteers).”

Women Build spokeswoman Ginny Bode credits the large volunteer pool to the leadership and networking skills of its members.

“I think it comes down to women are really great networkers of getting other women involved — that just kind of mushroomed from there,” Bode said. “I think women have been waiting for this type of project to happen for a long time.”

Women Build member Tammy Zempel said the women want to work, “just because we can.”

“It’s just giving women a chance who haven’t been in a construction environment to be in a construction environment,” Zempel said.

“A lot of women just want to get on the site, swing a hammer and build ... the fact that we’re women is kind of a secondary deal.”

For Vermillion, the organization is a metaphor for what women can do by combining their skills and efforts.

“It’s the contribution of so many people. All of us bring something different to a project like this,” Vermillion said. “It’s a real concrete form of coming together and piecing something that’s going to stay and remain and really make a difference. You can look at it and say, ‘Look what we did.’”

The project will benefit a single mom and four children, an aspect that is important to Vermillion.

She said the project also will allow women to work on the construction site without being overshadowed by men.

“It’s a nice way to be able to be in a construction environment without feeling intimidated, without feeling like you’re being told what it is, how it is and how to do it,” Vermillion said. “I think that is what is attracting women to this project. There’s none of that concern about what men think.”

At the concert on Sept. 14, Vermillion will use poetry and music to reflect on ideas about women and their diverse abilities. She wrote the majority of the music that will be performed, and she hopes the reflection of her experience as a woman will resonate with other women.

Even though the music is about “women’s hard skills and women’s need to nurture,” that doesn’t mean it’s about excluding men, Vermillion said. In fact, she’ll share the stage with a backing band of men.

Vermillion will be joined onstage by Grammy-winning bassist Garey Shelton, percussionist Mark Ivester, and pianist Tom Kellock.

Her collaborator, slide guitarist Orville Johnson, also will perform. Much of the music that Vermillion wrote will appear on future recordings with Johnson. She’s also inviting Anacortes teen songwriter Emily Leopold, who won the 2007 Seventeen Magazine songwriting contest.

Ticket sales will benefit the Sedro-Woolley housing project, which is one of four houses in an area named Habitat Village in Sedro-Woolley.

Aaron Burkhalter can be reached at 360-416-2141 or .