The Golden LEAF Board of Directors has awarded Goodwill Industries of Northwest North Carolina $434,850 to support workforce development programs. The funding award is part of the Golden Leaf Opportunities for Work (“GLOW”) program which helps create, sustain, and support job training services, scholarships, and outreach events in Davie, Stokes, Surry, Wilkes, and Yadkin Counties.
“This very generous funding award comes at a crucial time for Goodwill,” said Art Gibel, CEO of Goodwill Industries of Northwest North Carolina. “The economic hardships and high unemployment caused by the COVID-19 pandemic mean that we must now have the resources to meet a higher than normal demand for job training and job placement services. The GLOW funds will help make that possible.”
“Golden LEAF is dedicated to the long-term economic advancement of North Carolina,” said Scott T. Hamilton, Golden LEAF President, Chief Executive Officer. “In this time of uncertainty, it is important for our Board and staff to be a steady hand in supporting our nonprofits and governmental entities that help grow North Carolina’s economy in the communities we serve. The projects awarded today will help create new jobs in rural areas, get people to work in available jobs, and prepare communities for recovery from natural disasters.”
The Golden LEAF Foundation is a nonprofit organization established in 1999 to receive and administer a portion of North Carolina’s funding from the 1998 Master Settlement Agreement with cigarette manufacturers. For 20 years, Golden LEAF has worked to increase economic opportunity in North Carolina’s rural and tobacco-dependent communities through leadership in grantmaking, collaboration, innovation, and stewardship as an independent and perpetual foundation. Golden LEAF has helped to create 65,000 jobs, over half a billion dollars in new payrolls, and more than 84,000 workers trained or retrained for higher wages. It has also funded over 1,800 projects, totaling more than $1 billion.
The Golden LEAF “GLOW” program was launched in January 2020 to address the urgent workforce issues facing North Carolina. Although the COVID-19 pandemic has drastically changed the unemployment numbers in the state, there is still a great need to educate and train a qualified workforce.
To learn more about the Golden LEAF Foundation, visit www.goldenleaf.org. For more information about Goodwill workforce development programs, visit www.careersbygoodwill.org.
This project received support from
