Location and Context
The western mountains of Maine - occupying nearly 40% of the state's land mass - is 95% forested. It is more reminiscent of Appalachia than the often- idealized picture of Maine as picturesque coastal villages and lighthouses. Key industries include wood products, tourism, health care and education. The service sector is the fastest growth industry in the region producing about 30% of all the income in each county. Employment in agriculture, forestry and fisheries has risen in three of the four counties. Unemployment and poverty rates exceeded state averages in both 1990 and 2000 and  median income lags behind the rest of the state. Only about 10% of people over age 25 possess BA degrees as compared to 15% for the state and 24% in the country.

Investment capital is available to the region but effective demand for investment is lacking due to structural changes in the economy that have led to a decline of manufacturing and increased absentee ownership of businesses, the lack of mature entrepreneurs and the difficulty of aggregating sufficient activity into a critical mass in rural areas.

Collaborative Structure and Strategy Funded
The core Collaborative members, made up of two community-based organizations. Western Mountains Alliance (WMA) and Mountain Counties Heritage (MCH), a state-wide community development finance institution,  Coastal Enterprises Inc. (CEI), and a state policy research organization Maine Center for Economic Policy (MECEP) along with foundation members, are joining forces to develop the financial, social and political capital that will strengthen and sustain community-based development throughout the region. The western mountains is a laboratory for identifying and testing development strategies that the Collaborative will incorporate into a statewide rural policy agenda led by MECEP.

Community partners will identify regional development opportunities (with a special focus on craft and heritage-based industries) and mobilize a grassroots constituency to support a development agenda culminating in a regional development congress for 2004. An important part of building a local constituency is improving the region's leadership. The Maine Community Foundation with the Sandy River Charitable Foundation funding has designed a leadership program that WMA will implement. As development opportunities and entrepreneurs are identified and nurtured, CEI will invest equity and debt capital in businesses, farms, and land for sustainable forestry, as well as affordable housing and community facilities.

Leverage and Impact
We expect to invest at least $400,000 in the region that, depending on the investment mix, will result in jobs for low-income individuals, land acreage under local ownership and/or public access for forestry, farms and conservation through investments, easements, development agreements, affordable housing units, and more community facilities and community services in low-income communities. We also expect to complete a rural policy agenda that engages diverse interests throughout Maine and will influence the next gubernatorial administration to focus more resources on rural regions.

Vision of Work
In the course of the project, Collaborative members have come to realize that there are many influential Maine citizens with ties to western Maine despite living outside its borders. These ties may have developed through college or boarding school attendance, ownership of a summer or ski home or involvement in a major land conservation initiative. We are working on means to connect these individuals—and their skills, relationships and wealth—with important community development projects in western Maine that have come to our attention. In the same guise, we, as regional non-profits, have the capacity to connect worthy projects to the foundation community who may otherwise be unaware of their existence and potential. These are means of leverage and impact above and beyond the resources of the Collaborative members that we are beginning to explore.