Worker Wayne Anderson of Danbury waits outside the station. — Tony Spinelli photo
Ridgefield is not only the safest town in Connecticut and one of the best towns in Connecticut in which to live. It is also the most generous.
Ridgefield tops the list of towns that provide the most donations of clothing and merchandise to the Goodwill of Western and Northern Connecticut, according to a Press survey of Goodwill drop-off points.
There are 32 drop-off centers in the territory, including 16 Goodwill stores.
“We had 41,000 instances of people donating last year at that site, which is 20% more donor transactions than our next highest site, which is Greenwich,” said Vickie Volpano, chief executive officer of Goodwill of Western and Northern Connecticut, based in Bridgeport.
It must be noted that the Ridgefield Goodwill donor station is next to the town recycling center on Old Quarry Road, just down the block from Stop & Shop. It’s a convenient location.
“Location is a big part of it, because it’s a great location, but the other part is clearly, there’s a lot of good people in the area who choose to share their things and we’re so appreciative of that,” Volpano said.
The Ridgefield donation center has been there 30, perhaps 40 years. The organization had no record of exactly when it started.
The donor site attracts a broad array of donated goods.
“You could think of anything that could come out of a household, clothing, items from the season, household goods, sporting goods, books, some furniture, almost anything you could imagine,” Volpano said.
The donated goods from Ridgefield go primarily to the two nearest Goodwill stores, in Danbury and Brookfield, she said. “It is all pretty direct; it goes to those stores where staff on site sorts it and prices it in the stores,” she said.
The money raised from the donations sold helps support the Goodwill’s mission, which is serving people with acquired brain injuries, transitional employment programs to help people find work, residential programs, youth work, and in the newest aspect, Goodwill Career Centers, for people who need jobs.
“A lot of that goes back to our founding in Boston in the early 1900s. Donations were collected and sold in stores and the sales helped people have jobs and get wages. It’s not a handout, but a hand up,” she said.
Forty-one thousand donations a year comes out to about 3,000 donations a month. That’s a lot of work for the Ridgefield donation center, which is open seven days a week.
The hours are 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. It is closed on Christmas and Thanksgiving.
“The customers know us by name,” said Primilla Milinowski of Danbury, the site supervisor, who has worked there nine years.
The Ridgefield staff also works at the Redding donation station, on Route 7 near Branchville.
On this day, donor Diana Karish of Ridgefield brought by a box of dishes and glasses, kitchenware to share for the holidays.
Worker Jim Mahoney of Danbury figured the box weighed six pounds.
“This job keeps us fit,” Milinowski said.
Worker Wayne Anderson of Danbury gave it a lot of thought and said the reason Ridgefield donates so much is largely because the people are so good-hearted, but also because of the central location.
“People have to go to the recycling center, they stop here. People have to go to Stop & Shop, they stop here,” he said, referring to the only full-service supermarket in town.
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