Maine College Circle

Our Mission

To inform and inspire early aspirations . . . to empower the youth of rural Maine . . . to build a brighter future for themselves . . . and for their communities.

Our goal is to help more young, rural Maine students create a pathway through education to a career and a lifestyle they will be proud of. We pursue this mission by supporting better, earlier, and equal access to information on the opportunity of education, particularly higher education. We try to provide inspiration to build aspirations. We emphasize the value of effort. We promote community engagement and try to build energy within each community to celebrate their children and their community’s future. That is never simple or easy, and it takes years.

We can’t ask children to aspire to what they don’t know and understand. Information on education, particularly higher education, is a foundation upon which students and their communities can build aspirations for a brighter future.

Waiting until late in high school to build aspirations for higher education is not a winning strategy, and will leave many communities and this country disappointed. This is particularly true in rural communities where the opportunity of higher education is too often not part of the beliefs and daily conversation of elementary, middle, and high school students, their families, and their community. That conversation, those beliefs, those aspirations need to begin early. From our 25+ years in schools, it has become very clear that grades 4 & 5 are the pivotal years for aspirations in rural communities.

More education opens up more opportunities for everyone over a lifetime. A college education done well greatly increases the chances that a person will have a career and a lifestyle that will make them proud. We feel strongly that all students should have that opportunity, regardless of their current academic success or their economic background. And, we can’t build a brighter future for students or for their communities, but we can empower their youth to do that. Nothing empowers like knowledge and education. A brighter future won’t be built from somewhere else. It will be built from within.