2007 Annual Report Executive Summary

Empower Lewiston Enterprise Community

Building on last year’s framework for transitioning from a grant making entity to a stronger mission driven organization, Empower Lewiston took its first major step forward by installing new Board Directors & Officers under the new reorganized Board Structure.

A director new to Empower Lewiston and its Board include a Bates alumnus who has chosen to make the Enterprise Community (EC) her home, lives in recently rehabbed EC housing, works with the successful Lots to Gardens program as well as participates in numerous community activities and activist efforts. The business developer of the Central/Western Maine Local Workforce Investment Board with family roots in the EC is on the Board. Another new director is the Assistant Director for Bates College’s Harward Center for Community Partnerships. A downtown resident has joined the Board, who has recently moved from agency-based work to private consultant work offering expertise in a variety of areas addressing the needs of New Mainer refugees and immigrants. The Executive Director of the YWCA, located in the EC and the Executive Director of Community Concepts, Inc., a local community action agency have joined as well.

While Empower Lewiston’s new Board has strengthened and widened the organization’s community partnerships, it has also made a strong, active commitment to steering the organization to life beyond the EC designation. The Board’s Transition Planning Team began its work by conducting an environmental scan looking at the work presently being done in downtown by other community entities that address various goals and objectives, many outlined in Empower Lewiston’s benchmarks. While maintaining its commitment to downtown and strengthening individual and community capacity, the Board developed parameters for the organization’s future work at a level appropriate to that of a small grassroots organization working toward long-term sustainability. With an eye to building a stronger, more focused community identity, the Board formally adopted a new mission statement, “Rooted in the downtown, Empower Lewiston serves as a critical and innovative facilitator advocating for, with, and among downtown residents and businesses to determine our well-being, material security, and future together.” The mission will be advanced by the organization setting priorities and adopting key projects with focused/finite timelines that will have community-wide impact while also developing a microgrant/microloan program to assist individuals on their personal paths.

As the organization moves forward, it will work to bring community businesses and residents together in a tighter, mutually supportive relationship than has happened in recent years. Steps in that direction are happening through the Outreach Committee of the City’s Downtown Neighborhood Task Force, which includes an Empower Lewiston dedicated seat. Formation of the Downtown Neighborhood Task Force was a progressive step forward in City/resident relations with work beginning in earnest spring 2007 and continuing in 2008. Symbolically, this was reinforced when the City of Lewiston successfully received an All-America City award in its second attempt.

The City’s application and on-stage presentation entitled "Community Engagement Has An Address: Lewiston, Maine!" featured three projects including “Take the Money; You've Earned It", this campaign focused on reducing poverty and enhancing financial education community-wide and Lots to Gardens which sustains 15 urban gardens providing fresh foods for Lewiston residents who face difficulties accessing nutritious foods. Empower Lewiston participated in the All-America trip by sending a staff representative, who had utilized the Earned Income Tax Credit as a single mother putting herself through college. Lots to Gardens is now a successful community program started with Empower Lewiston seed money. [The third was the City’s Lewiston Youth Advisory Council’s UBooze, ULooze underage drinking awareness campaign.] Both the task force and the award highlighted the value of people coming together to create opportunities for community voices & inclusion, community solutions, and community vitality.

Just prior to the All-America City trip, Empower Lewiston was invited to be a co-presenter at a USDA EZ/EC workshop session at the annual American Planning Association conference in April in Philadelphia. With a national overview of the program presented by the USDA DC staff, Lewiston’s EC (0.9 sq. miles) was then contrasted with the larger California Desert Communities EZ. Despite the regional differences in size, each community could point to significant impacts supported by the EZ/EC program.

Our 2006 initiatives of a Junior Career Connection and Neighborhood Resource Center took new directions. The learning’s from the Junior Career Connection pilot project addressing youth workforce development were transferred to the Youth Council of the Local Workforce Investment Board, which is also looking at the Lots to Gardens Youth Gardening and Leadership as a regional model. Empower Lewiston’s Neighborhood Resource Center concept is currently on hold as other, larger community center models have been proposed in various communitywide venues this fall and may achieve a greater result than what is currently possible in the B Street Community Center. However, as the year ended, the Downtown Education Collaborative of which Empower Lewiston is a founding member located downtown storefront space and began its search for a Center Director. With new vitality in the organization and in the twin cities, the upcoming year is expected to bring exciting new possibilities for Lewiston’s Enterprise Community.

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