On Connecticut Street is a furniture store that will delight anyone looking to decorate a space or spruce up their home. Ready for Good is a bright, upbeat place filled with furniture and accessories fitting any style. Need a rug to brighten up a bedroom? They have it. An armchair for the family room. Yep, they have that too. How about new kitchen chairs or living room lamps? There are lots to pick from. Best of all, everything is priced much less than what you'd find at other stores.
However, Ready for Good has a much bigger mission. Addison and Lydia Shockley opened the store almost two years ago to give young people in the foster care and juvenile justice system a way to acquire skills necessary for success in life and the workforce. They train and mentor 50 or more youth annually in a "Furnished for Good" program. In an average of 10 weeks, these young people get paid work experience, life training, job readiness skills, mentorship, and support services for the future.
Addison explains, "For many youth, this is their first job. So, it's an opportunity to get introduced to the world of work. What are the expectations that might be different from home or from what it's like to just hang out with your friends or at school? It's a different world. And so we teach the youth here what's appropriate and not appropriate for the workplace. We have a 12-skill curriculum we go through. Then they work, and we train them in the basic expectations of employers."
The store also offers job training for young adults getting their GED at Peasley Tech. Addison insists they have a child welfare or juvenile justice system background. This program benefits the store because it gives them workers at different times of the day than the teenagers who have to work within the public school schedule.
Chandler King sees the shop's mission in action each day. He started working at the store to fulfill a community service requirement. The Shockleys liked his work so much that they offered him a job. Now, he spends his days putting together furniture and preparing it for display.
"It's a nonprofit to help kids and people in need, and I think it's just a really cool place to work," King says. "I like how they help the people that need community service get their hours, and I like how they help the youth and their job training program. It's very cool to see."
Running a nonprofit furniture store with this mission was not in Shockley's life plan. Addison was working on his PhD to become a university professor in communications. While working on his dissertation, he worked at the O'Connell Children's Shelter. There, he discovered he liked working with kids living on the margins and seeing life in a broken home as normal.
Then, when he was working on the weekends at his parent's Lee's Summit furniture store, the idea came to him: A furniture store that gives jobs to kids like the ones with which he worked.
"Addison is really good with teenagers," says Lydia. "He seems serious right now, but he can be goofy, and for whatever reason, they all just love him. They look up to him. They listen to him. It's a perfect match there."
Most of the furniture and accessories sold at Ready for Good are new liquidated pieces from places like Wayfair, Target, Amazon, and other home goods stores. The items are cleared from the warehouse shelves to make room for new items. A few items may have been returns that the retailers didn't want to deal with, and others are excellent, high-quality donations. Customers benefit from the lower prices, and all pieces are assembled before selling.
"It's like Christmas every time we get a truckload," Addison says. "We get all kinds of stuff, and it's always diverse. You never know what will be inside."
Ready for Good is located at 708 Connecticut Street. The store also has an online shop at ShopReadyForGood.com. You can also learn more about their mission and how you can help.
"I think people like to shop here because it's a win-win," Addison says. "They get something they want while also supporting us."
