On Thursday, May 13, over 200 guests were in attendance to watch while Youngstown Area Goodwill Industries’ employees and supporters were honored at an Awards Banquet at the Holiday Inn-Boardman. With Goodwill’s primary focus to rehabilitate and teach job skills to those with disabilities and other barriers to employment, the event acknowledged employees for exceptional performance over the past year, as well as the vital community support received.

“The Awards Banquet is a special event for Goodwill. It allows us to tell you what we do, but more importantly it allows us to recognize those individuals and businesses that have helped us to make a difference in the lives of people in our community. It also allows us to recognize employees and program participants for their success and achievements,” said Michael McBride, executive director, to the audience.

McBride reflected on the previous year and reminded those in attendance of Goodwill’s achievements despite a difficult economic time in which Goodwill and its nearly 250 employees paid $800,000 in taxes, served over 5,400 people in its programs, paid $3 million in wages and collected 3.5 million pounds of clothing.

As Goodwill begins to move forward, they first took time out to recognize those deserving individuals.

Some of those individuals recognized included a woman who initially came to Goodwill for services and ended up being employed at Goodwill for over 30 years, a volunteer who had put in many hours reading the entire Harry Potter series for Youngstown Radio Reading Services, a sheltered employee who recently moved into Goodwill Apartments and had to learn to live independently after the passing of his father and an individual who came to Goodwill from the Rescue Mission and now works in a full-time janitorial position at an off-site contract and has moved from the Rescue Mission into an apartment.