As some of you may know, I am a nurse. I've spent a lot of my career with the mentally ill and developmentally disabled,so I have a personal interest in Goodwill Industries. It brings happiness to this population. It gives them meaningful work, provides them a paycheck and allows them to be useful members of society. This helps to strengthen our communities, by providing employment, reusing objects, thus decreasing the amount of stuff in our landfills, and provides clothing and household goods to the less fortunate.
According to goodwill.org, they need our help in writing to our legislators about the following bills.
Second Chance Act- It would provide states grants to offer job assistance, drug treatment, mental health services, and job training to former prisoners returning home.
We all know the number of prisoners being released is increasing all the time.
IRA Charitable Rollover Provision- Would extend a tax provision to allow US residents to make a direct contribution from an IRA to a charitable organization.
Personal Retirement Savings for Persons with Disabilities- This would allow persons with disabilities to achieve self-sufficiency through work and personal savings for retirement. The current policy actually discourages savings as people getting SSI are not allowed to have savings of over $2000.
Goodwill is really the ultimate Green Industry. They do have another issue also, because they accept drop offs they often receive electronic waste. As a non-profit agency the do have to pay for the disposal of that waste which diverts critical funds. They support legislation to encourage people to dispose of electronic waste properly. So please don't drop off your old computers and ipods at your local Goodwill.
Goodwill helps sustain the happiness of many individuals. Let's do our best to help them in their efforts to continue this much needed community service.
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