A pair of Goodwill Industries in Southwestern Ontario are coming together as one.
The non-profit organization has announced a merger between Goodwill Essex Kent Lambton and Ontario Great Lakes effective March 31.
Great Lakes President and CEO Michelle Quintyn said the two organizations will be stronger as one.
"It's going to allow us to push resources to the front line-- to missions, to services," said Quintyn. "As we become more efficient in terms of collaborating around services like marketing, finance and administration, it enables us to have more resources to do what we do best, which is allowing people to get the skills they need to enter and prosper in the labour market."
Quintyn said following changes in government legislation, the economic landscape and timely transitions of leadership, the move made sense.
She said there will be absolutely no job loss as a result of the merger.
"We, in fact, will likely be growing. We have been growing in Windsor and London over the past year, and we actually have a plan to create 900 more jobs over the next five years," said Quintyn. "We are actually seeing some interesting growth with new technology, and we're getting better results within our various stores, so that means that we labour-up to be able to handle the volume."
Despite the changes, Quintyn said Goodwill will continue to have satellite corporate offices in Sarnia-Lambton.
"Sarnia has been where a lot of relationships and activities around career centres, along with Chatham, have been for decades," she said. "We're also expanding more reach into places like Windsor as well as other parts of Ontario. One of the things that I'm proud of is that the Goodwill model fits the smaller communities, so operating in towns like Strathroy, Tillsonburg and Goderich. I think we're a pretty important workforce development player in small-town Ontario as well."
Goodwill EKL has operated in the Essex, Kent and Lambton counties serving communities such as Windsor, Chatham, Sarnia and the surrounding regions for 85 years.
Goodwill Ontario Great Lakes corporate services and logistics hubs are situated primarily in London, with satellites in the Region of Waterloo and the Greater Toronto Area.
