Tuesday’s editorial highlights the value of the new Goodwill
center in Little River.
As the recessionary economy crawls
along and unemployment remains at record numbers, the timing could not be
better for a new Goodwill
JobLink Center
in the Little River-Longs area. Goodwill Industries of Lower South Carolina
Inc. officially opened the center Monday, but it began operating Jan. 19.
Through last week, it already had served 238 new clients, Rick Shelley of
Goodwill says. He is director of workforce development for similar centers in Myrtle Beach (Surfside
Beach), Florence
and Sumter.
The new JobLink Center
is in the Goodwill store on S.C. 9. The store opened Nov. 20, and normally
JobLink would start after six months of a new retail operation. The Little
River store “has done so well so soon that we pushed the opening of the JobLink Center,” Goodwill Lower S.C. President
and Chief Executive Robert Smith says. Throughout the 18 counties served by his
nonprofit organization, the eight centers have seen a 35 percent increase in
the number of people served in the last year and a half. New Goodwill stores
are designed with more space for the job centers. The Little River store has a
500-square-foot classroom, and on Monday four adults and their Horry County
Schools teacher (English as a Second Language) were in the classroom. Besides
ESL, the center has Horry County Schools adult classes in computer skills, GED
and basic testing, Shelley says. Goodwill also has a JobLink in its store on
U.S. 17 near S.C. 544. Smith says Goodwill is looking in the Carolina Forest
area for another location.
The JobLink Center
offers no-cost help with searching for jobs on the Internet including preparing
applications, cover letters and resumes. In some cases, the center even
provides clothing for a job interview. “We see people who lack the education
necessary to do a job,” Shelley says, so the adult education programs are
designed to help people learn basic computer skills, for example, which are a
requirement for some jobs. Shelley points out that the JobLink Center helps
people find all sorts of jobs, not only those with Goodwill.
Jobs, of course, are the mission of
Goodwill: “Helping people achieve their full potential through the dignity and
power of work!” Goodwill stores give hiring “priority to individuals who have
disabilities or barriers to employment,” Shelley says. Shelley estimates the
three Horry County stores have 140 part-time and
full-time jobs.
Every help agency in Horry County
has been seeing people who are turning to organizations such as Goodwill and
Churches Assisting People in Conway
for the first time in their lives. More than 6 million people “have been
unemployed for six months or longer, the largest number since the government
began keeping track in 1948,” Peter S. Goodman writes in The New York Times.
The U.S. Department of Labor says about 2.7 million people out of work “will
lose their unemployment check before the end of April unless Congress approves
the Obama administration’s proposal to extend the payments.”
Those are startling statistics, and
the numbers represent a terrible human toll. Efforts in Goodwill’s job centers
surely will shorten for many the time of being out of work. The new JobLink Center
is a most welcome, needed addition to the North Strand
area.
Finding help
Goodwill Industries of Lower South
Carolina Inc. | www.palmettogoodwill.org
JobLink Centers in Horry County
127 Loyola Drive, Myrtle Beach
(U.S. 17 near S.C. 544); 492-5160
2321 S.C. 9 E., Longs; 390-9068
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