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.

Education is the best strategy for building a brighter future for communities throughout the country, including rural Maine communities. Tax policies and government support programs may keep the lights on, but they do not build a brighter future, as education does.

Our goal is to help more students make more of the opportunity of higher education, with a special focus on rural Maine communities. 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 support 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.