Twenty teams of students from across the state — including a contingent from Tri-Tech Skills Center in Kennewick — built tiny homeless shelters as part of a statewide competition.

The Tri-Tech students disassembled and packed up a roughly 100-square-foot shelter they built for the state’s first Career and Technical Education (CTE) Showcase of Skills Homeless Shelter Project.

Six students who led the project went to Olympia to reconstruct the shelter for the competition on March 27 to demonstrate their technical skills as they built portable, energy-efficient homeless shelters.

The finished shelters will provide transitional homeless housing after they are moved to the Licton Springs site at 8620 Aurora Ave. N. in Seattle.

“When students tackle hands-on, relevant projects, they learn better and more deeply. That’s at the heart of CTE and why we wanted to showcase this in front of both policymakers and the public,” said Eleni Papadakis, executive director of the Workforce Training and Education Coordinating Board, in a release, noting the one-day demonstration project was within walking distance of the Legislature.

Each team received a $2,500 stipend to pay for supplies.

The shelters had to measure 8-by-12 feet and each had to include a door and at least one window.