Category: Blog

Since 2013, the Island Institute has been able to offer Geiger Scholarships to island students to help them pursue off-island enrichment experiences like summer camp or a semester abroad. Islesboro sophomore Dylan Frank, a Geiger scholar who also received a Compass Workforce Grant, recently spent his Spring semester aboard a schooner with Sailing Ships Maine and gained skills to help him pursue a career on the water.

The workforce shortage in Maine is nothing new, but it has become even more acute and highly visible as we emerge from the pandemic. In our work supporting Maine’s island and coastal communities, we’ve heard a lot about the workforce issues they are facing, and it is a top area of concern for the partners we work with. In response, we are broadening our education work to better focus on this critical issue.

For the next feature in our ongoing series of Archipelago artist profiles, the Island Institute’s Lisa Millette introduces us to encaustic painter, Helene Farrar, whose nature-inspired pieces create a profound connection to Maine and the world around us.

How do you cope with electricity outages and plan for energy resilience when you’re a small, isolated community—either at the end of a 40-mile power line or on an island several miles out to sea? Eastport and Islesboro, both off Maine’s coast, were selected to tackle these issues through a U.S. Department of Energy program, the Energy Transitions Initiative Partnership Project (ETIPP).

Since the development of Maine’s Ocean Energy Task Force in 2008, the Island Institute has worked to help the questions, priorities, and concerns of fishermen and fishing communities be heard in decisions about ocean use. As we move into a new set of work to support these conversations, here’s some of what we’re bringing with us from the past 13 years.

Now that Maine’s Climate Action Plan, “Maine Won’t Wait,” has been finalized and shared widely, what’s our role at the Island Institute in supporting our state’s ambitious goals? Since our last update, we’ve continued to work alongside Maine’s island and coastal communities to build climate resilience. Here, we highlight several examples of where we’re collaborating with communities and partner organizations.

In 2020, more than 14,000 Mainers participated in academic and workforce training through Maine Adult Education. They are Maine’s future: people who are overcoming barriers to employment and learning new skills they’ll need to access post-secondary education and training. Adult education is their avenue to that first job, or the next better job. And COVID-19 threw another enormous obstacle in the way.

At the Island Institute, we’re proud to collaborate with leaders across the coast to build resiliency and create opportunities that help to ensure our marine economies remain vibrant. “The Ocean: Life and Livelihoods” is the theme for World Oceans Day 2021, so we and our partners at Luke’s Lobster asked members of our community whose livelihoods depend on the ocean to share a little bit about their work, their connection to the sea, and the ways they’re working to create a more sustainable coast.

When the pandemic hit, it was hard to ignore the depth of the digital divide in Maine. We worried about school children and adults unable to work from home, because broadband access was not available or affordable. At the National Digital Equity Center, we worried about the many older adults who were already isolated and lonely being left behind without a way to safely connect with the world. Did our older adults have the resilience to brave this new-to-them world?