Dear Readers,

Martin Luther King, Jr. Day is next Monday, January18.  MLK Day marks a national day of service and giving back to our local communities.

There are dozens of volunteer projects taking place across northern New England.  To get involved, please visit the sites below:

Maine

There are more than a dozen opportunities across the entire state on the Maine Service Commission site.

Goodwill’s AmeriCorps members are also organizing service projects throughout Maine with which you can get involved:

1. January 18: Snowshoe Trails Mapping Day
(Mount Blue State Park, Weld)

Mount Blue State Park is open all year round, offering great winter recreation trails.  At 9:00 AM we will offer an Introduction to Using  GPS for new users.

We will be hiking the park’s snowshoe trails with GPSs and doing some light trail work in an effort to help the park and map the trails as part of a project we are doing to help promote healthy communities.  We will provide hand-held GPSs for event and some snowshoes.  There will be a brief intro training for new GPS users and hot drinks and light refreshments served to participants.

For more information, please contact Joel Alex at (207)649-0018.

2. January 17 & 18: Game Loft Opportunity (Belfast)
Come join us while participants role play a small town harboring an escaped slave in the 1850’s. The purpose of the scenario is to show the moral and ethical complexities of civil disobedience and to make the story personal to the young people who act in this role play session. The program is open to others as spectators and will be open to the public 1 – 4 PM.

For more information, please visit the Game Loft.

3. Janury 18: Wolfe’s Neck Farm (Freeport)

Wolfe’s Neck Farm volunteers will serve by learning to grow food in indoor containers – a gardening method that is available to almost all people, regardless of class, economic standing, or time of the year. We will serve ourselves and our families by learning how to grow food, and we will serve our larger community by donating half of the vegetables to our local food pantry.

Participants will also examine food in justice by participating in a “World Lunch.” By experiencing firsthand the unequal distribution of food across the world and in our communities, we will be challenged to address hunger and poverty. Contact Liz Brownlee at (207) 865.4363.

4. January 18: ReGift It! (Portland)

Our project hopes to bring together people of all ages and backgrounds to strengthen our community and bridge social barriers.  By collecting unwanted goods and redistributing them in the community, we will be meeting real needs for Maine people who are struggling to purchase normal goods in this tight economy.  AmeriCorps Alums of Portland, Maine believes that sharing goods and services is one of the best ways to make use of our community’s scarce resources and sees that the values of Martin Luther King will be upheld as we work toward social justice in this way.

ReGift It! is entirely volunteer organized and led – since we all have busy schedules, email is our preferred method of communication:  portlandregiftit@gmail.com If you don’t have access to email, feel free to call Caitlyn Horose at 720-298-2490.

New Hampshire -

Check out opportunities at VolunteerNH.org

Vermont -

Visit the VT Commission on National & Community Service at VolunteerVT.org

You can also visit MLKday.gov and Serve.gov for a complete listing of national and regional opportunities.

Dear readers,

Goodwill’s annual Trick of Treasurer Fundraiser is in full swing and runs through October 31.  For every dollar donated, you receive a “scratch ticket.”  Will your ticket be a trick or a treasure? Scratch away and you have the chance to win some of these great treasures:

- A Goodwill tote bag

- A Free Loyalty Card

- 10-20% off your next purchase

- $5 off your next $20 purchase

- And more!

Every dollar you donate will benefit Goodwill’s group homes so that we can make needed capital improvements. Goodwill has 23 residences that assist people who are in need of a comfortable home setting, while living as independently as possible. People served through these services may have an acquired brain injury, a developmental disability, or other barrier to independence that requires the support of Goodwill staff.

All 25 of Goodwill’s stores in Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont are participating in the fundraiser.

Want to learn more?  Watch a recent news piece on Goodwill’s group homes on WCSH-Channel 6 in Portland.

Dear readers,

With the first of October comes thoughts of fall, pumpkins, apples…and of course, Halloween.  I am still trying to decide this year’s costume, but I will be heading to Goodwill this weekend to get some inspiration.

The best costumes are often found by browsing through clothes, accessories, and shoes.  Do you want be an ’80’s fashion queen for sixties flower child?  No problem.  You can even go more traditional by finding all black ensembles for your witch outfit or paint on some yellow lines for an instant bumblebee.  Imagine the possibilities!

In addition to one-of-a-kind clothing to inspire your costume creativity, Goodwill also has several Halloween accessories to complete your outfit.  We have tombstones, creepy-crawly bugs, plastic knives and pitchforks, earrings, devil horns, and witch hats.  There are also lights and home decorations to get your place decked out for the creepiest holiday of the year.

Don’t have time to put together a costume?  We also have pre-packaged outfits ready to go – you can be a chicken, cheetah, fireman, grapes (!), shark, pirate, and more.

Do you have costume ideas?

Share them with us or send us your pictures and we will feature you on the Goodwill blog!

Project Laundry List, one of our favorite environmental non-profits in New Hampshire, recently held a “A Touch of Color” clothesline competition in Concord.  This was the first year of the annual competition and 14 businesses participated, including our Goodwill store in Concord!

The purpose of the competition is to install creative window displays with clotheslines, educating the local  community of the many “green” benefits of clothesline drying.  We have written about clothesline drying in past blog posts, but here are some more facts we learned:

1. Dryers use 6-10% of total residential energy use.

2. Americans use more energy on drying their laundry than Africans uses on all their consumption needs.

3. Some communities prohibit clotheslines, ostensibly, for aesthetic reasons.

4. Hang drying your laundry is better on your wallet and on the environment

5. For many people, hanging out clothes is a therapeutic activity.

6. There are numerous different sizes and styles of drying rack/lines available for individual needs and accommodations.

7. April 19 is National Hanging Out Day, a day of recognition and celebration for hang drying.

8. Alex Lee, Executive Director of Project Laundry List lives in Concord, NH

We look forward to participating in the competition again next year!  Enjoy the pictures below!

It’s that time of year again!  Goodwill is once again partnering with the Bon-Ton stores in Concord, NH and S. Burlington, VT, for our semi-annual donation drive.

From September 16-29, if you donate clean, gently-used clothing and home textiles at the Bon-Ton and Goodwill stores in Concord, NH and S. Burlington/ Williston, VT  you will receive 20 percent off coupons toward new fall merchandise, including apparel and cosmetics.

We are kicking off the event on Wednesday, September 16, with a “Stuff the Truck” event.  Goodwill staff will be at the Bon-Ton stores in Concord and S. Burlington from 9 am to 2 pm, accepting donations and giving away prizes.  We hope to see you out there!

For those of you who are not familiar with Bon-Ton, they are a great department store that specializes in clothing and household goods.  You can take a peek at their offerings online.

The donations will be sold at Goodwill’s retail stores in northern New England, where the revenue helps to fund job training programs and support services for people who need it most in local communities.

Also!  Every customer who donates gently used apparel during the Goodwill Sale event is contributing an “Act of Goodwill” to help others.  We are seeking a million people to support this mission by donating and registering their commitment on www.millionactsofgoodwill.com. In exchange for your support, you will receive a 25 percent in-store coupon and a chance to instantly win a $100 shopping spree instantly. Now through September 29, registered consumers will also be entered into the grand-prize sweepstakes for a trip for two to Los Angeles and a tour of Universal Studios.