Welcome back! As you may know, my goal is to educate and excite you about all that Goodwill does for our community and what it can possibly do for you and/or your business! If this is the first blog you have read in this series, please feel free to see how it all got started in my first entry here.
Each week, we will take you into a new area of our operation. This week I will be covering an event that is not new to our area, but that was brand new to me. The 89th Annual Shenandoah Apple Blossom Festival!
Year after year, over 250,000 people descend upon Winchester, VA to attend at a variety of music events, contests, parades, and many other celebrations. You wanna know something? They have fun! And as a partner of the event, so does the staff at Horizon Goodwill.
This year over the course of the nearly 2 week festival, you could find our staff working at most of the events. With about 50 employees putting in over 600 hours of labor, the Apple Blossom Festival is a great way for Goodwill to show the community what it can do and, in turn, what the community does for us! Blue Shirt Power!
The opportunity for clients to perform event setups, teardowns, clean ups, and security functions gives a great learning opportunity and real life experience to a broad range of people in the area that face a variety of barriers to employment.
But wait, there’s more! In many cases our clients are even functioning in a supervisory capacity. This work gives them the type of resume building opportunities that are critical to be competitive in the open job market. It is a HUGE value add to our mission and builds a confidence that you can see.
Thanks for reading! Please feel free to contact me with questions or comments regarding the blog or what our Business Services division can do for you! bmarks@goodwill-hgi.org