$125,000 GRANT FROM FORD FOUNDATION SUPPORTS
MAINE COMPACT FOR HIGHER EDUCATION

The Maine Community Foundation (MaineCF) has received a grant of $125,000 from Ford Foundation to support the new Workforce Initiative of the Maine Compact for Higher Education. The Maine Development Foundation (MDF) will administer the project.

The grant will be used to accomplish the mission of the Maine Compact to ensure that 10,000 additional Maine workers earn college degrees over the next decade with assistance from their employers. “This goal is ambitious,” says MaineCF President Henry Schmelzer, “but achievable.” He noted that if only 22% of Maine’s 45,000 public and private employers each helped just one more worker earn a degree in the next decade the target would be met.

The primary focus of the program will be on helping workers who have a high school diploma but little or no college experience to earn a two-year or four-year degree. The program’s advisory committee is co-chaired by Barbara Woodlee, president of Kennebec Valley Community College in Fairfield, and Steven Howe, communications manager at Pratt & Whitney in North Berwick. The Maine Development Foundation will organize and deliver the program under this grant. In 2003 the MaineCF and MDF launched the Compact, to increase post-secondary educational levels of Maine people.

The Ford Foundation is an independent, nonprofit grant-making organization. For more than half a century it has been a resource for innovative people and institutions worldwide, guided by its goals of strengthening democratic values, reducing poverty and injustice, promoting international cooperation and advancing human achievement. For more information about the Ford Foundation, go to www.fordfound.org..

Learn more about the Maine Compact for Higher Education.