United Way unveils new volunteer center in Boardman

The United Way of Youngstown and the Mahoning Valley hosted a ribbon-cutting ceremony Thursday morning to mark the opening of the Centofanti Volunteer Resource Center.

The 12,000 square building, located at 8133 Market Street in Boardman, is intended to serve as a hub for the non-profit's operations. The building features an open warehouse that will be used to organize and store items for supply drives and distribution, and offers additional meeting rooms for the hundreds of volunteers expected to utilize the space each year.

United Way president Bob Hannon told 21 News their outreach and base of volunteers have both grown significantly since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, which is why they began pursuing building a larger space.

"Pre-covid we probably had a hundred and fifty volunteers, now we have a volunteer base of about six hundred," Hannon reflected. "Many of them came on with the food distribution, some do report card mentoring, some volunteer in other ways. I think what we're really excited about is how many young volunteers we have."

Even before expanding to their current level of operations, Hannon said the United Way began growing out of its main office space in downtown Youngstown around four years ago.

Between Saturday of Caring, a monthly food delivery program, and Care Closets, resource pantries in the schools, the United Way needed more room to accommodate the growth in its work and outreach in the community, a press release from the organization said.

"We turned down product. We don't have the space downtown. Like Bombas socks has offered us eight thousand, ten thousand pairs of socks. We partner with Save A Lot, we had to turn down food at times. We get hygiene product, diapers, clothing. We can now store that here. We were trying to do that downtown, we were turning an office space into a warehouse," Hannon said.

Hannon added he hopes to create opportunities for other non-profits to use the Centofanti Volunteer Center for events and training in the future.

"One idea I had and I've talked early on with Red Cross about doing babysitter training here, a blood drive here," Hannon said. "So we want this to be a community volunteer center where the agencies we fund and other non-profits can certainly take advantage and use it."

The United Way's main office will remain in downtown Youngstown on Watt Street.