It will take time but the head of the local Goodwill is confident they can restore services lost when the Toronto Goodwill shutdown at the start of the year.
Goodwill Industries, Ontario Great Lakes announced on Wednesday it plans to expand from its current territory to the Toronto area as well as Central, Eastern, and Northern Ontario.
Goodwill President and CEO Michelle Quintyn says the expansion will fill the void left when the Toronto Goodwill shuttered its 16 stores and ten donation centres in the Greater Toronto Area, Barrie, Orillia, and Brockville. The facilities were closed suddenly in January putting 450 people out of work.
"It's going to take a least five years to get back to where it was when it was closed," says Quintyn. "It will take ten years to create our vision which is a much more expansive Goodwill. We anticipate creating our first jobs in early 2017. It will be slow at first as we lay the foundation."
According to Quintyn as many as 500 jobs could be created in the next five years.
She is also reassuring the public that the non-profit organization is well positioned to take on the challenge without meeting the same fate as the Toronto Goodwill.
"Our Goodwill is a very stable and established Goodwill. We have sufficient resources, we have a strong productive workforce of 600 team members, and quite a track record of growing over the last decade," says Quintyn. "We are going to leverage what exists and what we know has been working. We also are doing a very comprehensive strategic plan, market analysis and we'll be very diligent as we enter the markets."