Goodwill Industries of Southeastern Michigan Advocates for Literacy Throughout Their Community

Goodwill Industries of Southeastern Michigan (SEMI) is dedicated to advocating for literacy throughout their community. They have developed many partnerships through their literacy projects including: Great Start, Applebee’s, Rotary, Cradle to Career, Department of Veterans Affairs, local Police and Fire departments. In 2017 they donated over 15,000 pounds of gently used children’s books back to community literacy projects. Goodwill SEMI was recently featured in a video titled The Life of Your Book, showcasing how donated books are recirculated into the community. When you donate books to Goodwill SEMI you are impacting programs right here in our community. You can find The Life of Your Book video on the LISD TV YouTube channel and learn more about this strategic partnership on the Lenawee ISD C2C Literacy webpage.
To further the impact of the literacy projects in their community, Ecommerce manager, Margie Garcia, and her team orchestrated the “Read to Feed” project.  Lenawee County School Districts, along with Habitat for Humanity, The Boys and Girls Club and local Universities were invited to donate non-perishable food items in exchange for 150 books for their school or organization. The goal of this project was to raise 2 tons of food to distribute to local food pantries throughout the community.
On March 24th, in partnership with Hunger Free Lenawee and Cradle to Career, Goodwill SEMI hosted the first “Read to Feed” event. Collectively, Lenawee County Schools, Habitat for Humanity, the Boys and Girls Club, and Siena Heights University raised 4 tons of food! With the help of Neighbors of Hope and volunteers from multiple organizations, the food was distributed among 14 food pantries serving Lenawee County. Each location was able to take over 500 pounds of food.
The grand prize, for most food collected, was awarded to Blissfield Schools for collecting 2,415 pounds of food. On April 16th, Blissfield Schools will be presented with a trophy and an additional 500 books. Hudson Schools will also be receiving an honorable mention award of 200 additional books, for their dedicated organization during the book sorting. They are proud of their community for its inspiring commitment to support those in need. They thank everyone who has donated books to Goodwill SEMI, to all the schools and organizations who collected food, and everyone who donated their time to sort books. They have already begun planning for next year’s “Read to Feed” with a goal of 5 tons of food!
If you would like to become a partner in their literacy projects or to learn more about other community efforts please contact Margie Garcia at (517) 263-2135.