Siloam Mission is airing out their dirty laundry with their new social enterprise.

A new laundromat facility located at 309 Logan, inside of Siloam Mission’s donation center, is now open for business. Over the next month the company will be working out the kinks, but Communications Manager Luke Thiessen hopes that in the new year they can service other Winnipeg businesses. Siloam Mission is excited to serve their community with their new facilities.

“It’s on-site and hopefully expanding once we are properly up and running, and ready to take on new customers,” says Thiessen. “Our first customer was Siloam Mission. The first set of laundry that we’re doing is the laundry we produce.”

At the moment the service is focussed on laundering the linen for all 120 beds and other things their shelter needs to be cleaned. The laundry service is yet to be named but already has two full-time staff members and other casual workers. The laundry service employees two full-time staff members and various casual workers that they are training at the moment.

Employees are “community members who have used our services,” says Thiessen. "(They were) Identified as a really good candidate for this work.” Siloam Mission wanted the project to be “simple enough to train people with no specialized skill or education. They can come in and learn."

Siloam Mission has a long history of helping Winnipeg. This latest venture was created as a way to help previous customers get to work but still bring in money for the shelter.

“It originated with just the idea of running a social enterprise. For us, we wanted to find out what type of business that we could run that would be profitable that would do good for our community.

The facility is a way for Siloam Mission to do good in their community while hopefully earning a profit. The facility was made possible with a $200,000 grant from the Winnipeg Foundation.

In the new year, the laundry facility will be accepting new clients who want to do business with them.