Aroostook County’s message to New Mainers? We want you
Aroostook County’s Northern Maine Growth Initiative received a $10,000 grant toward its efforts to increase the working population in the county with New Mainers, and to offer educational and employment opportunities to a more diverse population.
The grant was awarded by the Aroostook County Committee of the Maine Community Foundation, according to a news release.
Northern Maine Growth Initiative, a grassroots collaboration of business, educational, social services and faith-based groups, has been working on plans to attract more families to the region and build the workforce.
Member and Northern Maine Community College President Timothy Crowley told Mainebiz the grant will help the initiative to develop promotional material with a unified message designed to attract immigrants.
“The grant will help us put together materials that talk about the region and the advantages of being in Aroostook County and the opportunities provided for people when they move here,” he said.
Materials will be created for online use and for distribution, he said.
“We have a workforce challenge,” he said. “There are opportunities for cultural diversity that are significant and important. One thing we’re seeing is that the people who live and work here are competing to hire people away from each other. They realize they need to work together to bring people to the region.
"We all need to share resources to bring people here to support the region’s economy.”
Advantages for new residents, he said, include work opportunities, available housing, low crime and an attractive lifestyle.
“We hope this grant will help us put a message together that’s clear,” he said.
The plan is to have materials developed by September, he said. The initial target audience will be a Puerto Rican community in Connecticut, with which the group has already initiated contact, he said.
“We need to identify other groups,” he said. “Maine is a very attractive place to be and we’re looking for a workforce, so the opportunities are pretty significant.”
There’s some thought to connect with new immigrants in Portland as well, he said.
Crowley and other members of the initiative traveled to Connecticut in February to provide information on workforce and housing opportunities for Puerto Rican families, with the goal of relocating four Puerto Rican families to Aroostook County.
“We made connections with them, and with other families who were already in Connecticut, from Puerto Rico, to help them see the opportunities available to them if they moved to this part of the state,” he explained.
At that time, he said, the effort to bring families to Aroostook were not successful.
But, he added, “We learned a lot doing that.”
For one thing, he said, the group learned that February is probably not a good month to invite folks from Puerto Rico to Maine. The group also learned that additional groups need to be involved in the outreach, including faith-based, banking and real estate communities.
“So we’ve broadened our base in terms of the people who are involved,” he said. “We continue to reach out to the Puerto Rican community and to others, and to show them the opportunities that are here.”
The initiative is unique because it’s a regional effort involving many different sectors that can talk about Aroostook County from different perspectives, he said.
The group plans to return to Connecticut in the fall, to continue to build relationships with the Puerto Rican community, he said.
In 2017, Northern Maine Community College and Maine Community Foundation partnered to bring Somali immigrants to Aroostook County to explore agricultural opportunities. That effort stemmed from ideas discussed in a March 2016 conference at the college, in which local business and civic leaders spoke about being more proactive in the face of a continuing decline in the county's workforce.
Aroostook County has faced significant outmigration since the early 1990s.
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