Nearly
100 Maine social and environmental activists are in the final stages of
drafting a strategic plan they hope will bolster their work. The
unified plan will be submitted to the Blueprint Project, a program
sponsored by the public foundation the Proteus Fund, based in Amherst,
Massachusetts. The program is designed to bring chronically independent
advocacy groups together to craft a state “blueprint” for social
change. According to Meg Gage, president and executive director of
Proteus, the foundation could supply from $500,000 to $1 million to the
Maine coalition, renewable annually. Maine’s Blueprint plan application
will likely be submitted this spring.
In
2005, Proteus selected Maine and Wisconsin to launch Blueprint. Sarah
Standiford, executive director of the Maine Women’s Lobby and the Maine
spokesperson for Blueprint, is light on details about the nature and
cost of state advocates’ developing strategic plan, but says the
project, if funded, could make advocacy groups here a lot more
effective.
“I
think what’s most important for people to understand is that the
process itself is unprecedented in the number of people involved and
the number of organizations who have put their hats aside and their
different constituencies aside to sit down and talk about having a
better impact on the state and being more powerful in the work that we
do,” she says.
Local
activists have met several times over the last four months to hammer
out exactly what infrastructure they need to be more effective.
Participating groups include Environment Maine, the Maine People’s
Alliance, and the Maine League of Young Voters. Advocates clustered
into subgroups, according to one participating member, focused on
aspects of advocacy work like media outreach and political lobbying.
The next step is to join the subgroup suggestions into one plan.
