A Smarter, Kinder Maine is targeted to 40 7th – 12th grade students from southern Maine who attend the REAL School. All students have experienced prior school failure with multiple scholastic interventions that have not worked. They continue to fail. All students report Adverse Childhood Experiences, and 80% of the student body is on Free and Reduced School Lunch. Lacking in consistent, positive role models all students are enrolled in Special Education (a Dept. of Ed. technical term) and, therefore, require individual, specialized programming in order to have successes.

In step with Positive Youth Development Theory the need, then, is two fold: 1. Long term, consistent adult mentorship and guidance beyond classroom and therapy; and 2. employable skills. Failure-prone youth need role models beyond that provided by normal parenting; and they need to be able to earn income, that is, to learn a skill that makes them employable. When these needs are met, students experience heightened self esteem and an upward spiral of increased self worth that result in a continued desire to learn, they are able to place trust in adults, and they develop the capacity for permanent well being.

Since simple internships fall far short of these needs, highly trained mentors with mental health training and diagnostic skills will address the issues that swirl around abused youth who have become certified failures through no fault of their own. The goal of the program is to provide employable skills with continued life coaching by trained adult mentors. The objectives are 20 identifiable mentor-mentee relationships by the end of the first year. The REAL School is strengthened by creating a life long positive learning environment, the only solution for very talented young people with life-to-date overwhelming negativity and abuse. Learning knows no end point. As a solid, carefully thought out learning process, A Smarter, Kinder Maine becomes a pilot program home run for others to emulate. By making improvements to the current curriculum, disenfranchised students are given the opportunity to become employable, gain the resiliency to deflect the next abuse (and it will happen), and participate in an upward spiral of well-being. Projects, Inc. is strengthened with the opportunity to apply 43 years of experience in creating another problem solving success through the application of its six, time honored criteria for sustainability. And, finally, by investing in the time to create trust with employable skills the project will expand to create a steady stream of young people with increased capacity to reframe themselves as life long learners and solid members of not only their community, but any community.

REAL School students often find success at the school but then struggle to find fulfilling viable careers after high school. Not surprisingly, when they technically graduate from high school, they drop out of sight lacking positive adult connections. This is our national model, passive abandonment for those not headed to post secondary education. With the introduction of long-term mentors, we anticipate that 80 – 90% of those enrolled in the Smarter, Kinder Maine project will be employed, on a career track and in control of their lives 3 – 5 years after graduation. Their mentors will either be with them or have been replaced with a then current dedicated adult. Though not necessarily a life long relationship, the mentor-mentee relationship is intended to endure for a long time as an integral part of the Smarter, Kinder Maine initiative.

The idea to pay mentors a stipend is imperative. Too often we have experienced the best of intentions lost on legions of volunteers simply because they are not held accountable for their performances. Our mentors are supervised in a 1 -1 relationship as paid employees with the expectation that because they are paid, albeit nominally, the success of their performance must fit a high standard of training and expectations.

Our InterTribal Education project continues to develop curriculum thanks to a multi-year grant of $50,000 from the Betterment Fund. Hosted by Maine Indian Education, LLC in Calais and curriculum coordinator Beth Clifford, the project will include students from both the Penobscot tribe and the two Passamaquoddy communities, Sipayik and Indian Township. As planned last year, we intend to present 19 subject matters that directly relate to learning entrepreneurial skills. The student population ranges from Grade 6 through post secondary with all learning opportunities crafted to fit age appropriate proficiencies.

The going is slow, largely because we want to get this right, not only by taking native cultures into account, but also by presenting experiential learning that fits with academic training. Projects, Inc. is taking a few pages from our time spent in creating Service Learning programs during the 1980’s to model what we want to present to tribal youth. Later this spring and into the summer we will offer learning experiences that fit current patterns of in-school, after-school, and vacation block learning times.
All students in the target age range (numbering over 400) will be offered entrepreneurial skills training. We intend that 15 – 20% will pick up the passion for creating self initiated, risk taking use of time and resources, and that in the future this fresh zeal will create financial independence for them.
From start to finish this is not a straight line! Tribal cultures feature many thousands of years living in balance with their environments. Our Projects, Inc. task, then, is to bridge their successes to ours, for the benefit of both. Though eminently compelling, this will take time. As Winston Churchill observed; “Success is all about going from one failure to the next … without losing enthusiasm!” Although we may not to get it right the first time, we will get it right.

– by Perry Gates

On Thursday, July 21, I represented Projects, Inc. at the Restorative Programs and Practices for Maine Youth sponsored by Maine’s JJAG and held at USM in Portland, Maine. The intent was to learn the results of their survey on restorative justice practices as they impact the juvenile justice and education systems in Maine. And report they did!

The presentation was clear, easy to follow, and unequivocal. Many facts, both general and specific, surfaced during the day with the summary numbers indicating that over 80% of those surveyed believe that Maine should become a “restorative state” with respect to how youth are educated and interact with the justice system. Clearly, restorative practices “work,” meaning reparation occurs, healing is practiced, victim needs are met and satisfied, causes for doing harm are addressed, and the likelihood of future offenses is reduced.

As true with most entrenched and funded pathways for doing business, the culture will have to change while restorative justice proves itself… in scientific terms. But change, the culture will. The current list of what doesn’t work such as punishment, bullying, lock-ups, compressed group housing, forced assimilation, suspensions, and labeling is long and egregious. It really can’t get much worse. The science of what does work will be slow to reveal the healing of the human spirit into an arena where no harm is done; but this revelation will occur starting with the simple truth that social change occurs fastest when the cost goes down. Tax payers love this. And the science on this one is clear. It costs 1/20 as much to apply restorative practices as it does to persist with punishment… and in both cases, justice is served.

Exciting though this may be, I found the excitement focused on mission and purpose, with little talk about vision. In fact, by the end of the day’s long presentations, I realized that I had yet to hear the leadership, or anyone else for that matter, use the word “vision.” Whirlwinds of energy swirled around what we are going to do; but not much, if any, attention was given to where are we headed.

So, I asked. “What’s the vision? Where is all this headed?” After a flutter of rustling paper and scratching of pens I was answered, “ We’ll put some energy into this. Great idea.” I know a vision exists. It simply needs to be put into words.

In future blogs I will write about the six criteria Projects, Inc. uses for assuring sustainability. Of these, vision is the most important. When the going gets tough, and it will, vision is the faith we lean on. It’s kind of like when someone says, “Oh, just do the right thing.” That’s all nice and spiffy, but if we can’t say what the right thing is–the vision–we are doomed to a shortened performance of doing.

What can Projects, Inc. do to move restorative practices forward?

1. Assist those interested in creating organizational, community centered visions.

2. Articulate expressions which outline communities even where there are no obvious outlines. How is community defined? Somewhere between spiritual fuzziness and geopolitical borders we are all parts of innumerable communities. This is a tough one!

3. Move those interested away from “what” they do towards “why” they do it, their BELIEFS, since (like it or not) it is our passions, our emotional core, our “beliefs” that drives us.

4. If you or your organization feels stuck, contact us at info@projectslearning.org. We can all work on getting unstuck.

As noted in our email last fall the Passamaquoddy Maple Syrup Ventures was funded for three years by the Administration for Native Americans at the amount of $500,000 for each year. Forty-nine grant applications were received from all sources nationally; five were funded; ours was one of them!

The project is the development of Passamaquoddy tribe forest lands for maple syrup production in western Maine and the creation of value-added maple syrup processing plants on reservation lands near Eastport, ME. The Passamaquoddy are one of four native American tribes in Maine. Near Jackman, Maine they own over 60 square miles (twice the size of Manhattan Island!) of timber lands which contain productive stands of sugar maple trees that will be developed by meeting strict certified organic standards. The syrup will then be transported to processing plants for year around businesses of bottling and retail sales managed by tribal members, young and old, who share a passion for proliferating their culture through high quality agriculture and craft products. Although Projects, Inc. is involved as a consultant to the project, the project is 100%, wholly owned by the tribe meaning that sustainability is built in.

How does Project Inc, then, with its mission of community development, education, and service learning fit into this project which on the surface is about harvesting an agricultural commodity? For a short answer go to the: www.projectslearning.org/maple-sugaring-1975-1995/  page and read up on our Maple Syrup project, started in 1975. This is a signature example of how our non-profit uses experiences in the for-profit realm to identify and solve community wide problems. According to tribal leaders their issues around employment, substance abuse, small business development, cultural identity, and self esteem are palpable. What better opportunity, then, to develop a shared interest project with tribal members that creates employment through sustained business development using cultural and tribally owned natural resources. Improved self esteem and reduced substance abuse will be the welcome by products … the real results which will take hold and grow over time.

The Projects philosophy of realizing significant by products from activity in shared interests is at work. Heightened self esteem is realized through experience, by doing something with others; self confidence is created through repeated successes in production and marketing; being of service is learned through shared work and measureable performance; success has a way of breeding further success. This is why we are involved.

Last fall in a flurry of activity 48 hours after the grant award was made we struck out into the woods with timber cruise GPS locations, marked trees to be removed, performed the TSI (timber stand improvement), set in the tubing (some of it at in wind child of -35 F.) and are now preparing to collect the first run of sap and process it with reverse osmosis equipment in our “ship container” facility. Next year it will be different; but for now we need to join the industry and make a showing. Spring is on its way as are more of these posts!