A Story Full of Thanks: By Stacy Sackett

          My name is Stacy Sackett. I’m a mother of six children, foster mother of four children, and a grandmother of one. I’m also the new Lead Cashier/Supervisor of the Ashtabula, OH Goodwill store. I wanted to write a little something that I am very passionate about: homelessness.  Everyday, someone or some family is becoming homeless right here in our county. As a community, we need to do something to help this problem. I know of what I speak, having recently been there myself.

          On May 5, 2016, my family of 13 became homeless due to circumstances beyond our control.  We had five days to remove everything that we owned from our house. We had nowhere to go, and who wants to take in 13 people? NO ONE! Thankfully, we had a family member who owned 50 acres of land who gave us permission to live on his property in our tents. This is where we resided for three long, hot months. Living in the woods was not easy, but I was thankful that we had tents, canopies, a port-a-potty, and a grill. Not all homeless people have the luxuries that we had. I am grateful for all that we did have, right down to the well water that we found on the property, and the woods for giving us shade from the hot sun.  

           Even though I appreciated the little things, depression was settling in. I was homeless, jobless, and worried about my family with cold weather quickly approaching.  So, every day, I got up, took a sponge bath, and started placing my résumé everywhere I could. My biggest hope was Goodwill.  I really felt like I needed to work at Goodwill because it is a job that allows me to give back. After three long months of searching every day, I got the call from Goodwill, and we finally found a new house to rent.  I’m thankful to say that we are now out of the woods.

          As you are reading this, there are approximately fifty homeless people/families living in the gulf in Ashtabula. We, as a community, need to help. Donate to Goodwill where people can get affordable household items. Donate to food pantries. Donate blankets, flashlights, batteries, and whatever it takes to make life easier for these families.

          My advice for people in the same situation is to first of all: keep your head up. Don’t let depression get you down. Call upon resources to help you. Catholic Charities, Children’s Services, and food pantries located in Ashtabula, Jefferson and Conneaut are there to assist you. All of these places can help.

My Life in Overview: By Jenn Snow

          My name is Jenn and I am a recovering drug addict and alcoholic. At the young age of 13, I started sneaking beer from my parents when my friends would come over to stay the night. Drinking was my way of trying to “fit in” and feel accepted. Gradually, it kept getting worse. Over the years, it went from only drinking with friends to feel accepted, to now trying to cover up the emptiness inside of me that I needed filled. I loved the attention I was getting from everyone while I would be out drinking. My biggest fear had finally come true: I was an alcoholic like my mother. 

          Eventually, alcohol wasn’t enough to hide my pain and hurt anymore, so I turned to street drugs, which had completely taken over my life. I ended up losing everything, including all my children, and becoming homeless.  For many years, I struggled with my addiction and kept trying to hide from life, when all I was doing was letting it pass me by and missing out on my children growing up.  I couldn’t seem to figure out how to pull myself up out of the gutters until the beginning of this year, when I finally hit rock bottom and had enough.

          At that extreme low, I was four months pregnant with my now three-month-old daughter Payton. Homeless, sleeping outside in cars, and still using drugs in the middle of winter, I became sick and tired of being sick and tired. At this point, I knew it was time to make a change. I went to the Community Counseling Center and got a case manager; someone who would help me get on the right track and start moving my life forward in the right way.  She got me involved in IOP (Intensive Outpatient Therapy), which is a drug rehab program that lasts three or four months. I then signed up for another Section 8 program called Shelter Care Plus to help get me off of the streets.

            My case manager took me to Ashtabula County Job and Family Services to sign me up for the PRIDE Program at Goodwill. It took me almost two months to get approved for the Shelter Care Plus, but thankfully, I now have my own apartment and have been there for four months. During that time, I had also managed to start my drug classes, and have since graduated from that.  Now I’m following up with a group called Relapse Prevention, and attending 12 step meetings regularly.  I just recently got a sponsor, which I am very excited about.  Now that I am back from maternity leave, I have started the PRIDE Program at Goodwill again, and this time, I am not pregnant, so I can fully participate in all of the classes and work. I am very thrilled to see where I can go and what I can accomplish. I have nothing but a positive outlook on my new journey in life, now that the path has taken an uplifting turn.

What Was Your First Job?: By Sandi Allison

This question was recently asked of a few employees here at the Goodwill office. Below are the beginning jobs in which everyone started out —most were less than glamorous, but each was a starting point nonetheless. Most people start out “low on the ladder” to success, and have to work their way up from there. These are the steps that you have to take as you develop work skills and habits that shape you into the professional you become. There are many rungs on the ladder of success!

The Art of Rolling With the Punches: By Harry Corbissero

          ROLLING WITH THE PUNCHES is what I call a “life skill,” meaning we have a whole lifetime to continue to develop such a capacity.

          It is a skill pertinent to the sphere of work, which is why I have ongoingly dealt with it as a class theme over my long years as an instructor here, but a topic with an obviously broader reference.

          So, at work or in life generally, the skill alludes to our ability to maintain our balance on the—at times—extremely rocky path of life, and to have the resiliency to get back on our feed on those occasions we do get knocked down.

          You perhaps are already getting the picture of how productive an influence Goodwill is in helping people who have been impacted by one adversity or another do this very thing—gain a reentry into the workforce after some rough sledding, or overcome the punch of “no experience,” if still a newcomer to the game.

          Yet, I have a bit of an ulterior motive in introducing this theme in my present story….

          One reason—but a very significant one—Goodwill is a great place to work, in my opinion, is because of the visionary prowess of our CEO, Eric Schwarz, currently obligating all who work with him to roll with some unprecedented new punches at this agency.

          Eric has one foot in the now, rooted in the past, with an awareness of all the good accomplished in these former eras, but also with one foot invested in the unknown future.  The expansion of both our services and service areas newly underway here constitute a feat of growth unheralded in this organization’s history.

          Eric is quite zealous in his determination to help as many people as possible during his watch, and the growth anticipated is boundlessly spectacular and veers in many new directions.

          Like our leader himself, however, we all have to trust a vision in the throes of creation, struggling to be born.   It’s an exhilarating rite of passage.

          There is an exquisite intricacy to the balancing act this thrust demands; you can see why it is best considered an art.

Comments From Our President/CEO, Eric Schwarz

          On October 25th, I had the privilege of attending the Erie Non-Profit Partnership conference at the Bayfront Convention Center in Erie, PA. The theme of the conference was “Resilience”. For those of us invested and operating in the Non-Profit side of the market there is an uncanny need for us to be culturally resilient. Conditioning our organizations, strategic thinking and positioning to move consistently forward without interruption of services is critical for us to increase and sustain outcomes. My attendance at this conference proved to me to be highly valuable in framing my vision for market services and the development of our organizations service strength as we proceed with resilience to dial in and sustain programs that strengthen our community. The conference was a brilliant mix of pointed sessions oriented towards the theme of selling value in services, promoting them effectively and understanding how to appeal to your supporters. My take away from participating in this event was that Goodwill needs to continue to drive for long-term sustainable outcomes. If we touch a life, I want to know that we touched it for a lifetime and in that touch we handed off some of our hard-earned resilience.

          Thank you all again for your support at Goodwill Industries of Ashtabula, Inc. Serving Lake, Geauga, Ashtabula, Erie and Crawford Counties.