Goodwill & Girl Scouts: The Dynamic Duo

Goodwill Industries serving Northeast Ohio and Northwest Pennsylvania has consecutively teamed up with the Girl Scouts to do a “good turn” for the community for many years now, by donating gently used clothing and household items for the annual Good Turn Day drive. The goods collected from the Girl Scouts are processed and then sold at our Goodwill retail stores to fund Goodwill’s job training programs for people with disabilities or barriers to employment. The Good Turn Day collaborative service project has offered Girl Scouts the opportunity to make a positive impact in their community. It is a long-standing opportunity for Girl Scouts to assist Goodwill Industries in the fulfillment of our mission; “Building self-sufficiency through the power of work”, and by collecting and distributing donation bags throughout local communities.

 Goodwill is very pleased to partner with Girl Scouts to inspire and encourage from a young age. Many of the organizational values of the Girl Scouts and Goodwill are nicely aligned: a commitment to community and a dedication to helping others. The Girl Scouts have donated time in our stores organizing merchandise and have also donated items that have exemplified our Goodwill supporters, shoppers and donors; they see the value of giving unwanted items new life and helping to lift up others, all while building confidence in their own ability to change lives.

Good Turn Day 2016 resulted in 33 Girl Scout participants and over 100 donation bags!  Every Girl Scout that participated in Good Turn Day earned a Good Turn for Goodwill patch and a personal thank you letter from our CEO, Eric Schwarz, expressing our appreciation of how their donations help support Goodwill`s mission, and individuals in need, right in their own community.

Project YES! Official Kick-off in Corry, Pennsylvania

          Goodwill of NE Ohio and NW Pennsylvania has expanded its workforce development services to Erie County with Project YES, a Pre-Employment Transition Services (PETS) program offered in partnership with Pennsylvania’s Office of Vocational Rehabilitation (OVR). This program is designed to promote independent living, self-advocacy, and workplace readiness skills to youth with disabilities and other barriers to employment. Project YES teaches these skills through classroom instruction, job shadowing, and work-based learning.

          Project YES is implemented under the leadership of Director of Mission Services Matthew McCray, and Workforce Development Program Manager, Hanni Nazario. Matthew brings to Project YES several years of experience in vocational assessment and job coaching, having spearheaded similar programming through Goodwill in Pittsburgh, PA. Hanni brings to the program her expertise in curriculum development and classroom instruction, having worked for many years in Erie area schools.

          Goodwill staff, including CEO Eric Schwarz and Workforce Development Director Sandi Allison, joined Matthew and Hanni in launching Project YES’s partnership with the Corry Area School District on November 3rd. This night marked the official kick off of services in Corry, with an open house for students and parents who will participate in the program. This is the first service of its kind being offered in the Corry Area School District, and has attracted the attention of the entire Corry community. The event was covered by local news outlets, including a front page story in the Corry newspaper and the lead story on that night’s Erie TV news. Many Corry parents expressed excitement and hope for the success of their students, who will now be able to enter the workforce armed with the skills needed for success.

          Goodwill plans to expand Project YES to several other schools in Erie County over the coming year. Both Matthew and Hanni look forward to this unprecedented opportunity to empower students to better their own communities though the power of work.

The Importance of Donations: Second Hand to Second Chances

          Think of the biggest companies you can.  Off the top of your head, you might name several fortune 500 companies.  Sometimes people think of “Goodwill” as a massive conglomerate the likes of Coca-Cola, Alcoa, and 3M.  When people think of Goodwill, they often think of it as a monolithic entity with a centralized office and satellite locations.  The reality could not be further removed from this perception. Goodwill is actually comprised of 164 member organizations that each operate independently. Each Goodwill operates under the Goodwill name, but is fully responsible for obtaining and securing funding in their respective local area of responsibility.  That funding is the lifeblood of what we do here.

          The mission of Goodwill has always been to provide services to the community utilizing the funding we receive.  This funding comes from a variety of sources such as grants, endowments, state and federal funds and most importantly, donations.  Donations are the main thing driving what we do here at Goodwill and they are the main reason we are able to provide services to the community.  In many ways, none of what we do is possible without you.  That old sweater that didn’t fit anymore?  That helped pay for a job training program that helped four individuals with Autism get job training and work readiness skills.  That couch you kept in your garage and hadn’t sat on for 10 years?  That helped pay for someone to fulfill their dream of getting their GED.  Those golf clubs you bought and used once because you totally swore you were going to play 18 holes every week with your buddies from college?  That helped pay for someone who had been out of work for two years to get the training they needed to re-enter the workforce.  Your donations help us provide services to those in need.

          It’s not just your donation of used goods that assists us in our mission. Goodwill also relies on private cash donations as well as monetary donations from various community organizations and donors in order to provide services to the community.  Even with all the proceeds from donation and public funding, there is a limit to what services can be provided.  These funds, when augmented with cash donations, give us the tools that we need to provide comprehensive services to the community.  It is Goodwill’s mission to provide a hand up to those in need in the community and without donations, none of it would be possible.  

From the Desk of the CEO: Meet the Board

          This month, I would like to dedicate this column to recognizing the faces behind the strength and stability of your local Goodwill by saying Thank You! to our Board of Trustees for their selfless service in 2016, a year that has proven to be one of improved performance on all fronts. Our Board assists in our professional guidance and visioning and ultimately has responsibility for the culture and stability of what Goodwill means to our community.

Kathryn Banks: A school psychologist with the Boardman Local Schools and Director of Music at Christ Church Presbyterian.

Jeffery Brodsky: Retired Orthopedic Surgeon

Mike Brown: Owner of Amerisearch Background Alliance

David Flautt: Financial Advisor at Edward Jones

Bernadette Hattjar: An Associate Professor of Occupational Therapy at Gannon University, tenured Associate Professor and a published author.

Bill Hyland: Owner of Outdoor Army Navy

Jeff Lampson: Owner of Gazette Newspapers and Accounting Department Director of Finance at Community Care Ambulance

Chris Oleski: Store Manager at OfficeMax

Craig Sernik: Director of a Council of Governments

David Spotts: Maritime Lawyer at David M. Spotts J.D.

Steve Vennare: Vice President of Commercial Banking at Andover Bank

Ron Wilkinson: Owner of Wilkinson Paving & Excavating, Inc.

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!