Yukii Johnson huddled around the whiteboard with her classmates, clad in a hard hat and bright yellow construction vest.
She and the group stood atop a flat, plywood foundation, pieced together on the floor inside the 100,000-square-foot building at 501 Mainstream Drive in MetroCenter.
It didn’t look like much of a home yet, but soon, Johnson and the rest of the class would build one inside that very room. Later on, another group of students will take the whole thing down as part of a separate classroom exercise.
The group is part of a job training program through the nonprofit Goodwill of Tennessee, which operates a dozen career centers across Middle Tennessee.
Johnson learned about the free program via TikTok. She previously worked in a dental
lab, but she’d been looking for a more hands-on career.
Building a house from the ground up is about as hands-on as it gets. She’s not even two weeks into the class and already calls it a “hidden gem.”
“I feel like it’s definitely very beneficial,” Johnson said. “Coming here is probably going to make my life go in a whole (other) direction, and I feel like that’s all thanks to Goodwill.”
That program is just one of the resources on offer inside Goodwill’s new 17-acre Opportunity Campus, which officially opened in MetroCenter Oct. 1.
The new facility is intended to be a support hub for career education and training for Middle Tennessee, centralizing resources that until now have been spread between 12 other career centers throughout the Nashville area.
Goodwill's work goes beyond thrift stores
For Chief Mission Officer Cindy Varner, the new facility’s opening is a chance for the community to see Goodwill as much more than just the thrift stores that are perhaps most familiar to the average person.
“A lot of folks think about Goodwill, and they only think about our thrift operation,” Varner said. “You know, we’re a social enterprise. So the reason we have those thrift stores is so that we can give back to the community. Every donation that’s made in a store, we sell that donation and then we use that money to give back.”
Goodwill does so by providing free services in education, training and employment, Varner said. The nonprofit expects to serve at least 7,500 Middle Tennesseans across all its career center locations this year.
The Opportunity Campus provides even more avenues to meet that mission.
The job training wing of the new building includes classroom spaces equipped for both in-person and distance learning, a career navigation center where clients can work with consultants to prepare for job applications and interviews, and lab spaces like the construction lab where classes can get a hands-on crash course in a trade. Another of those spaces, a welding lab, has doubled Goodwill’s capacity for students in one class.
Clients come from all walks of life, Varner said. Some have emerged from a tough background. They might be survivors of domestic violence or human trafficking, or someone leaving incarceration. The job training wing also incorporates an element of privacy for those folks, by way of resources like private coaching offices.
Others might be freshly graduated high schoolers, seniors who’ve left retirement to seek employment or people with college degrees who are simply having difficulty nailing down a job. For them, classes in resume writing and interviewing become a boon.
“I think different people, they don’t know where to go,” Vice President of Mission Advancement David Meadows said. “They don’t necessarily teach these types of things in school, or even in college. That’s where we are open to everybody.”
Still more to come
Even though the bulk of construction at the new facility has wrapped up, there’s still more to come.
For example, Varner said one side of the space will feature a 24,000-square-foot adult high school, slated to open by 2029. That’s possible thanks to a measure passed during this year’s legislative session, when the Tennessee General Assembly authorized the establishment of adult public charter schools.
A free early child care center is also in the works, and on an expedited timeline. Varner said it’s set to open by early 2027 so that it’ll be ready early for folks involved in job training programs and, later on, for the students enrolled in the high school.
There’s also space for future growth, from office spaces for community partners to classrooms intended for future job training program additions. Varner said another skilled trade lab could be geared toward HVAC careers, and negotiations are currently in the works to offer job training in other fields.
“We’re not the only nonprofit serving people in the community,” Varner said. “So how do we make sure the other nonprofits who don’t do what we do know about what we do and can connect their folks with us?”
Austin Hornbostel is the Metro reporter for The Tennessean. Have a question about local government you want an answer to? Reach him at ahornbostel@tennessean.com.
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This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: A look inside Goodwill's new campus for free career training
