Community Building

Working Communities Challenge

Fiscal Sponsor

Contact for more information:  [email protected]

The Working Communities Challenge was launched in Maine in October 2020. Its mission is to understand how persistent, growing poverty impacts the region and to develop collaborative and inclusive strategies for everyone in the team’s communities to thrive.  In the Maine Highlands Region, we focus on empowering and enabling people living at or near the poverty level

The Maine Highlands Region includes: Abbot • Atkinson • Beaver Cove • Blanchard • Bowerbank • Cambridge • Charleston • Dexter • Dover-Foxcroft • Exeter • Garland • Greenville • Guilford • Harmony • Lagrange • Medford • Milo • Monson • Northeast Piscataquis • Northwest Piscataquis • Parkman • Ripley • Rockwood • Sangerville • Sebec • Shirley • Southeast Piscataquis • Wellington • Willimantic

Helping Hands with Heart

Fiscal Sponsor

Contact for more information:  [email protected]

Helping Hands with Heart (HHH) has been serving the Maine Highlands region since 1998 to address unmet resident needs as well as help to identify and create meaningful responses to regional challenges through our collective impact coalition approach. Our Unmet Needs Fund assists local residents to respond to pressing needs – all the way from car repairs to helping the homeless. Our broader regional responses have included supporting youth mentoring in area public schools designed to promote a sense of community connection and increase youth understanding that they matter to us, our work to help response to our substance use challenges through increasing treatment options as well as supporting the Recovery Wellness Initiative serving our whole region, and our BUNDLE Initiative in partnership with the HoME United Way to provide four gift boxes during the first year of life for all babies born in the Maine Highlands to welcome them and to help their parents learn about area supports and services that they may want to explore. HHH meets monthly and welcomes new members who want to contribute and make a difference in our region!

The Joy Truck Project

Fiscal Sponsor

Contact for more information:  Facebook

The Joy Truck Project is a free community resource center and youth-led alternative learning hub in a renovated bread truck. Founded in 2021, The Joy Truck Project was imagined as one way to begin answering how the distribution of material resources and relationships might be bolstered in rural regions of Piscataquis County. The Joy Truck Project distributes free clothes, art, school supplies, books, personal hygiene items, and Narcan. Additionally, this project focuses on constructing workshops for families and youth in partnership with regional food cupboards, local businesses, free summer meal sites, and neighborhoods.

The Joy Truck project is a fiscally sponsored project in partnership with Central Hall Commons and has received funding from the Ella Lyman Cabot Foundation, Onion Foundation, Maine Humanities, and the New England Grassroots Environment Fund. Previously roving the Maine Central Highlands, this project is currently stationed in Brownville Junction, continuing to host youth-led activities in collaboration with Cooperative Extension of Piscataquis County 4-H. The Joy Truck programming takes place in the Brownville Junction Legion Hall one Saturday a month from October to April, and begins weekly programming in the Joy Truck from May to September. Information and photos from this project can be found on Facebook as The Joy Truck.

Shiretown Singers

Fiscal Sponsor

The Shiretown Singers live on! We are delighted to introduce Susan Ramsay, our new artistic director, who has a long history and great experience in teaching and playing stringed instruments in the area and beyond, as well as in leading a church choir. We meet on Thursdays from 6-7:30 at the Methodist Church, and we welcome all to join in for another season of singing together and spreading the joy of song.

Our rehearsals are at the Methodist Church, back door.

The Shiretown Singers, named after the group that sang in the region in the 1970s and 80s, have been singing together since October 2024.

Living Innovations:
Dover-Foxcroft

Living Innovations, a service of Mosaic, provides support to people with diverse needs to have a good life at home and in the community.

We started helping with the dementia friendly community garden in its second year. The garden has grown with the addition of raised beds. One of the individuals made bird houses for the garden. The individuals help with planting, weeding, and watering the garden.

We also volunteer at The Open Table luncheons, which are open to people of all abilities and ages. Some weeks, the individuals cook the meal. Other weeks they make a main dish or dessert for the potluck. The individuals help with setup and cleanup.

One staff member and their individual clean at The Commons every other Thursday. There are other volunteer opportunities that pop up throughout the course of a week.

Dover-Foxcroft Age
Friendly Committee

What began in 2016 as an interest in the AARP/World Health Organization Network of Age-Friendly Communities has continued to grow in commitment in the town of Dover-Foxcroft. Recognizing the importance of promoting age-friendly planning and policies to address changing demographics in our region.

Looking forward, we strive to continually improve our work to support active and healthy aging. Healthy Aging, being one of Central Hall Commons’ re-focused values as a Multi-Generational Community Center, we are proud to provide a space within which to make this work possible.