Contributors (below, left to right): Corrie Hunkler, Youth Program Manager, Healthy Acadia; Denise Cilley, Associate Director, Sunrise County Economic Council and Selectperson, Town of Jonesport; Melissa Moffett Denbow, SVP, Community Impact Manager, Machias Savings Bank; Dodie Emerson, Community Engagement & Communications Manager, Sunrise County Economic Council.
Washington County’s future depends on cultivating the next generation of leaders, innovators, and community builders who choose to stay and thrive locally.
At the recent Sunrise County Economic Council (SCEC) Economic Summit, educators, economic development professionals, and community leaders discussed how schools, communities, and local partner organizations are creating pathways for young people through leadership opportunities, civic engagement, and entrepreneurship education.
Creating a “Line of Sight” to Local Opportunities
“I don’t want anybody in Washington County to feel like they need to leave to be successful and feel like they’re getting that message from their community that there are no opportunities here,” said Corrie Hunkler of Healthy Acadia, articulating a central theme of the discussion.
A key focus was creating what panelists called a “line of sight”—actively working to show youth the opportunities, potential, and resources available locally so they don’t feel they have to leave home to be successful.
Melissa Moffett Denbow of Machias Savings Bank spoke to the urgency of this work: “I saw people who were talented, who were so smart, but were held back because there were barriers that they couldn’t overcome. I thought ‘How do I bring those opportunities to rural Downeast Maine? How do I keep Washington County on the map?’”
As a result, Machias Savings Bank now partners with Junior Achievement on The Titan Challenge that provides real-world business and innovation skills, and Jobs for Maine Graduates (JMG), Junior Achievement and SCEC, on the Money Maker Showdown, which provides business training and an opportunity to pitch a business idea for a chance to win a cash prize.
JMG has emerged as a highly effective model, demonstrating a 14% higher income for participants. The program focuses on crucial soft skills such as shaking hands, dressing well, and carrying on conversations—”soft skills” that employers often find lacking.
Panelists (left to right): Corrie Hunkler, Denise Cilley, Melissa Moffett Denbow, and Dodie Emerson
Ensuring Young People Feel Heard
“I just want our young people to know that they matter, that they’re heard, that they can be successful, and that they have people who care and can support them,” said Dodie Emerson of Sunrise County Economic Council, expressing a core principle that resonated throughout the session.
The success of all programs, panelists emphasized, rests on listening to youth, making them feel “heard and valued,” and tailoring efforts based on their actual needs rather than assumptions. Ensuring that young people have a strong support network of caring adults emerged as fundamental to youth development.
Panelists emphasized that many young people face systemic barriers. Approximately 70% of participants in the JMG program, for example, come from low-income or rural backgrounds where geographical barriers (including fear of driving outside the immediate area) prevent them from pursuing higher education or career paths.
Entrepreneurship: A Growing Youth Interest
The session revealed a dominant interest in entrepreneurship among high school juniors and seniors, with young people actively interested in starting their own businesses, ranging from food trucks and online art sales to landscaping and locksmith services. This reflects the high self-employment rate typical of Washington County.
What panelists described as a “heartwarming and significant observation” is that this strong entrepreneurial interest is often paired with a desire to stay and build their businesses within Washington County, actively countering the historical narrative that they must leave to be successful.
Denise Cilley of Sunrise County Economic Council developed the ”Partners in Entrepreneurial Pathways” programs, a collaboration between the SCEC’s Small Business & Entrepreneurship Team, which fuels MaineStreet Business Building, and Washington County Community College. The free 2-part program takes place in the Fall (Pathways 1.0) and Spring (Pathways 2.0) of each year and teaches the fundamentals of starting and developing a business–from startup to exit (with the option of no-cost college credits). Its success lies in connecting learners (450 to date) directly with business leaders, entrepreneurs, and commercial lenders across Maine, many of whom are right in Washington County, and provide 1:1 feedback and support to learners via live online sessions.
Starting Career Exposure Early
There was consensus that career and workforce exposure must start “much younger” and as early as elementary school. Alexander Elementary School‘s “Workforce Wednesday” program for grades 4-8 uses hands-on, simulated workplace activities alongside career exploration. The curriculum outline was developed by Dodie Emerson of SCEC in collaboration with the school’s teacher and is being piloted as a school-community partnership. Through the program, students earn hypothetical paychecks in order to “pay” rent and other business expenses to instill life skills and financial literacy early.
The goal is to break down limiting “boxes” that kids and adults put themselves in, panelists explained. Examples include showing students who are good at shop work that they could be an “engineer” in a design lab, or encouraging kids who enjoy fishing to intern at places like the Downeast Institute to explore diverse, related ways to earn money from the ocean, beyond traditional lobstering.
Integrating Youth Voice in Civic Life
The Washington County Youth Leadership Challenge bridges the gap between schools and community leadership, teaching students how local decisions are made and exposing them to civic roles on select boards and planning boards.
“I think about reimagining spaces in our communities that are for community, but also for our youth,” said Denise Cilley, who serves on the Town of Jonesport Select Board, highlighting the importance of creating inclusive community spaces. In Jonesport, middle and high school students were engaged in the comprehensive planning process and their voices were incorporated into the Town’s master plan–something that Denise strongly feels, “should be part of every municipality’s comprehensive planning processes.” Furthermore, local youth were invited to present their vision to select board members to rebuild the tennis and basketball courts in their town, which is already in development with plans to reopen the courts as soon as the coming season allows. Efforts like this are working to bridge the gap between youth who have a strong interest in community planning and the feeling that youth have “no voice” in local governance.
However, challenges remain. There has been resistance to letting youth participate in formal advisory roles, and there is still a lack of widespread practice of integrating the “voices of youth” into official town documents, such as comprehensive plans.
Addressing “The Adult Disconnect”
Despite successes, panelists identified what they called “the adult disconnect.” A significant concern raised is that programs primarily focus on youth, but parents, grandparents, and guardians who have “boomeranged” back with education often don’t know where to find resources to help their children access these opportunities.
“The most successful programs are programs that have wraparound community support,” said Corrie Hunkler of Healthy Acadia. Yet panelists agreed that there is a severe lack of a consolidated “resource list” for parents and supporting adults, hindering this crucial “wraparound community support” that leads to the highest rates of student success.
School engagement is challenging. Limited staff capacity and inconsistent points of contact often make it difficult for programs to work directly with schools, leading organizations to rely on partners like JMG as conduits to reach students. While events like opportunities fairs, which match students’ interest assessments with relevant professionals and industries are valuable, a barrier remains in getting schools to participate and bring students to these engagement opportunities.
To help bridge this gap, Educate Maine has developed a program to expose educators to the reality of local industries and businesses, such as high-end modular home manufacturing, agriculture, and millwork. The goal is to allow educators to better inspire students with a realistic view of the diverse, modern, and high-quality job opportunities available in the region.
Encouraging Diverse Interests
A shared strategy emphasized by the panelists was to “never shut down a child’s dream”, whether it involves fishing, farming, or a service trade. Instead, use interests as foundations for related, diversified, and sustainable career paths that allow young people to stay, succeed, and remain rooted locally.
Professionals are actively trying to cultivate diverse interests that local schools are not able to robustly support, such as arts, music, and dance. Partnering with organizations, like the Machias Arts Council and the Maine Academy of Modern Music, helps cultivate creative interests and shows students that their diverse passions are valued and can be pursued locally.
Healthy Acadia’s Extended Learning Opportunity (ELO) program provides students with hands-on, real-world experience outside the traditional classroom setting, individualizing their learning and connecting them with community partners. This youth-led, place-based learning approach validates youth interests while building practical skills.
While acknowledging that many young people still feel the pressure to leave, panelists noted that leaving and gaining outside experience can lead to a “vision reset,” helping them appreciate and eventually “boomerang” back to local opportunities. A critical factor is ensuring that, when they’re ready to return, pathways exist for them to build meaningful careers and futures at home while sharing the knowledge and expertise they have gained.
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Thanks to Jessica Crowley, APEX Counselor at SCEC. for moderating this panel at SCEC’s Economic Summit; to Denise Cilley for serving as the session liaison; and Elaine Abbott, Program Manager for Broadband and Workforce Housing for taking notes.