“How do we care for the people who care for the people?” Heather Augustine asked this brilliant question early in my work at Maine Initiatives and I think about it often. Who are the people who care for the people? How do we care for them? It’s one of the simplest ways to understand our […]

It’s impossible to deny that 2025 has challenged our relationship with hope and courage. Hoping for the best can feel irresponsible in times like these, when the realities of rising authoritarianism and attacks on civil rights and liberties force us to plan for the worst. Yet here at Maine Initiatives, we still make a case […]

Here in the land of the Wabanaki (Maine) this time of year, when the greens and yellows of the late summer give way to golds and browns of late fall, feels like a time for preparing. In rural Maine, it’s a time of planting garlic, wintering beds and wood stacking before the hard frost comes. […]

Since joining Maine Initiatives in 2018, I have been in awe of what I have witnessed and learned from the immigrant-led ecosystem in Maine. This is a diverse, robust, resilient, and tenacious network of organizations working across a wide range of sectors: farming, food security, health, housing, gender justice, community organizing, advocacy, and more. They […]

Two weeks ago today, I was sitting in a room in New Orleans with 20 other people on our last day of a three-day Undoing Racism training with The People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond (PISAB). The group included some individuals, but also clusters of staff members from justice-focused organizations and partnerships across the country, […]

Maine Initiatives is thrilled to announce the Immigrant-Led Organizations (ILO) Fund’s 2025 Grantee Cohort, ten immigrant-led organizations whose work advances immigrant, refugee, and asylum seeker flourishing in Maine, unceded Wabanaki Territory.  The missions of the 2025 ILO Fund Grantee Cohort exemplify the diverse, robust, and highly-skilled immigrant-led ecosystem operating statewide, leading vital efforts across a […]

Maine Initiatives and the Nature Based Education Consortium are thrilled to announce the 2025 Outdoor Equity Fund Grantees, five community-based organizations dedicated to improving equitable access to nature-based learning opportunities for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) in Maine. This is the third cohort of organizations supported through the Outdoor Equity Fund, joining 20 […]

My natural place is to be hopeful: holding fast to the faith that our work, though arduous, is rooted in a vision that a better world is possible.  “The arc of moral history is long, but it bends toward justice.” – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. This faith is certainly being tested in this period […]