When I first stepped into the role as president of Island Institute just 15 months ago, I reflected on the weight of responsibility that had been passed and the unimaginable changes that had shaped our part of the world over the past 40 years. This was even before the back-to-back, 100-year storms that imperiled the coast in January.
I found myself at the helm of an organization that was founded when Kenny Rogers’ and Dolly Parton’s hit song, “Islands in the Stream,” had commanded the airwaves. The soundtrack of my first year, however, was quite different. Consider Beyoncé’s “Texas Hold ‘Em” from her country album and Billie Eilish’s “What Was I Made For” from the blockbuster Barbie movie. The differences between then and now couldn’t be starker. The same could be said for Maine’s coastal and island communities.
Finding throughlines across the decades has helped me understand not only what has changed along Maine’s coast but also what remains strong, solid, and perennial. Throughlines help us understand where we came from. They leave a trace across time and geography. They help us make sense of our history and set a tone for the future. This is why Island Institute has highlighted some of our own throughlines over the past year, celebrating the most enduring parts of our work.
Island Institute Fellows require the trust of the communities to successfully implement their projects.
One of the most important throughlines in our work is the Island Institute Fellows program. While I love all our programs, no other Island Institute investment so fully captures the longstanding and deep commitment between our organization and coastal communities.
Since 1999, the Island Institute Fellows program has placed talented, recent college graduates in some of Maine’s most remote and rural communities for a two-year assignment. The ask of our Fellows is threefold: to immerse themselves in their host community, to provide an extra pair of hands and expertise on significant projects important to these communities, and to embody the power of small communities doing big things in their outlook and approach.
For a quarter of a century, this approach has netted great benefits for host communities and Island Institute Fellows alike. With nearly 150 current and past Fellows and a half-million hours of community support, the impact of the program is astounding.
In my time with Island Institute, I have seen one of our Fellows help a community move from an unreliable energy system to a state-of–the art plan for smart energy resilience. Another reintroduced robotics to an island school, paving the way for those students to compete in an off-island, state championship. Fellows have preserved oral histories and digitized historical archives, helped islanders protect their drinking water, introduced telemedicine, and tackled myriad community building projects.
Island Institute Fellows require the trust of the communities to successfully implement their projects. In turn, the Fellows strengthen the bonds and resources that sustain these unique communities. It’s a perfect virtuous cycle.
The Fellows themselves have sought and found true, deep, personal connections in these extraordinary places. The connections have been fostered over knitting groups, open water swims (at all times of the year), recipe exchanges, and multi-generational friendships. Many Fellows have stayed in Maine, bringing their deep sensitivity to rural and coastal community needs into their professional jobs.
Some have found long-term partners and have made a permanent home in the community they served. Others, too, have found their way to Island Institute’s board of trustees, ensuring that we hold the challenges of island and coastal communities at the core of our mission.
The commitment to hold island and coastal community challenges at the core of our mission is the throughline that I have most often turned to as I have found my own footing this past year. Like the music of Rogers, Parton, Knowles-Carter, and Eilish, it manifests differently across the years but like the Fellows program, it begins and ends with island and coastal community aspirations at the heart of all we do.
Kim Hamilton is president of Island Institute. She may be contacted at khamilton@islandinstitute.org.
