It was a wonderful meeting this past Friday at Rotary Club of Savannah East! The club was delighted to meet one of this year's GRSP students. Maria Juliana De Viveres comes from a family of Rotarians and she presented us a Rotary flag from her home club in Columbia. Thank you, Maria! After all Rotary business items were discussed, Kim Campbell introduced our speaker for the day, Erin Nolan, who is the Vice President of Manufacturing for G-Force, a division of Goodwill.
Eric began by saying that Goodwill is a diverse social enterprise. Not only do they collect donated goods to sell, they also have a business service division (primarily cleaning operations) and a manufacturing division. Within the manufacturing division, they have ReFactory (partnership with a French company that dismantles textiles to be used for other things) and G-Force.
G-Force's main product is a fiber glass installation that is sold to the aerospace industry. They primarily sell to Gulfstream but are in talks with other aerospace companies. G-Force hires people from all different backgrounds. They want to give people a second chance and are hoping to bridge the gap in order to help their employees get into more competitive jobs. The goal is for them to learn a skill and then move on to bigger and better things. The largest hurdle in finding employees is transportation as the manufacturing facility is not on a bus route. Eric said we can help by sharing information about G-Force and by donating goods to be sold in Goodwill stores. All profits fund a mission at Goodwill.