Goodwill Industries
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Goodwill Industries International is a network of autonomous community-based organizations providing job training and employment services to people with work place disadvantages and disabilities in 25 countries.
Goodwill Industries includes in their corporate values statement (http://www.goodwill.org/index_gii.cfm/530/) diversity and dignity for all people. Headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland, the organization is Non-denominational and not directly affiliated with any one organized religion.
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Business
Goodwill Industries International is a network of community-based, autonomous member organizations in the United States, Canada, and other countries. Goodwill provides job training and career services to people with disabilities and other barriers to employment. The organization trains people for careers in fields such as financial services, computer programming and health care. Since its founding in 1902, nearly 8 million people have benefited from Goodwill’s employment programs.
To pay for its programs, Goodwill collects and sells donated clothes, shoes, furniture and other items in their 2,015 stores and on its Internet auction site shopgoodwill.com (http://www.shopgoodwill.com/). The organization also earns revenues and creates jobs by contracting with businesses and government to provide a wide range of commercial services. Such services are: janitorial work, packaging and assembly, food service preparation, and document management and destruction. Diebold Incorporated, Kimberly-Clark and the U.S. Air Force are among those who’ve tapped into Goodwill’s services.
To mark its Centennial Anniversary in 2002, Goodwill launched an international workforce development initiative -- the Goodwill Industries 21st Century Initiative -- to help 20 million people enter the workforce and move up the career ladder by the year 2020.
History
Goodwill Industries was founded in Boston’s South End by Rev. Edgar J. Helms, a Methodist Minister assigned to the mission of Morgan Chapel. Helms put people in need – many of them considered unemployable – to work by hiring them to collect, repair and sell donated goods. Although the name Goodwill Industries would not be coined until 1915, 1902 became known as the year Goodwill Industries was officially born.
The Goodwill Philosophy (http://www.goodwill.org/index_gii.cfm/1636/) is thus a "a hand up, not a hand out" or "a chance, not a charity". Helms said it was an "industrial program as well as a social service enterprise ... a provider of employment, training and rehabilitation for people of limited employability, and a source of temporary assistance for individuals whose resources were depleted." So, instead of giving hand-outs, donated goods are sold for profit and that money is used to pay workers, who otherwise might not have jobs. That is true, even to this day.
With the Methodist church backing expansion, by 1920 there were 15 Goodwill organizations, including Morgan Memorial. In subsequent decades, the relationship with the church would gradually lessen as Goodwill sought leaders from outside the ministry, and as federal funding requirements made it necessary for Goodwill to become a more secular organization.
Today, the organization has grown into a global network of 207 independent, community-based agencies in the United States and abroad. In 2004, the organization reported revenues of $2.39 (b) billion, where 723,485 people benefited from Goodwill career services and 104,110 people placed in good jobs outside Goodwill. Also in 2004, more than 84% of Goodwill's revenues were spent on its education and career services expenses, as well as other critical community programs.
Movie Tie-In
Warner Bros. Pictures and Goodwill Industries Partner for North American Pants Donation Drive (http://www.goodwill.org/index_gii.cfm/2870/)
Friendship, empowerment and self-sufficiency are among the themes of the upcoming film The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&c2coff=1&q=movie%3A+sisterhood+traveling+pants&btnG=Search). People across North America are being urged to “Join the Sisterhood” (http://sisterhoodofthetravelingpants.warnerbros.com/join.html) by participating in a unique nationwide project of donating their jeans to Goodwill Industries - the world's leading nonprofit provider of education, training and career services for people with disabilities, welfare recipients and other job seekers.
Based on a best-selling novel by Ann Brashares, [1] (http://www.randomhouse.com/teens/sisterhoodcentral/) [2] (http://www.teenreads.com/authors/talk-brashares-ann.asp) [3] (http://www.powells.com/authors/brashares.html) The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants is about a special summer in the lives of four lifelong friends who are separated for the first time. On a shopping trip, they find a pair of thrift-shop jeans that fits each of them perfectly and decide to use these pants as a way of keeping in touch over the months ahead, each one wearing the jeans for a week to see what luck they bring her before sending them on to the next. Though miles apart, the four friends still experience life, love and loss together in a summer they'll never forget.
Alcon Entertainment presents The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (http://sisterhoodofthetravelingpants.warnerbros.com/), which opened nationwide on June 1, 2005. The film is distributed worldwide by Warner Bros. Pictures, a Warner Bros. Entertainment Company. It is rated PG by the MPAA for “thematic elements, some sensuality and language.”
External links
- Goodwill Industries (http://www.goodwill.org/)
- Goodwill Industries: Headquarters and Store Locations (http://locator.goodwill.org/)
- Shop Goodwill (http://www.shopgoodwill.com/)
- Goodwill Industries of Central Texas (http://www.austingoodwill.org/)
- Goodwill Industries of Denver (http://www.goodwilldenver.org/)
- Goodwill Industries of Greater Grand Rapids (http://www.goodwillgr.org/)
- Goodwill Industries of the Inland Northwest (http://www.giin.org/)
- Goodwill Industries of Northern New England (http://www.ginne.org/)
- Goodwill Industries of San Francisco (http://www.sfgoodwill.org/)
- Goodwill Industries of Tacoma, Washington (http://www.tacomagoodwill.org/)
- Goodwill Industries of Western New York (http://www.goodwillwny.org/)ja:グッドウィル・インダストリーズ
References
- Goodwill Industries International - About Goodwill (http://www.goodwill.org/index_gii.cfm/530/)