MFES uses the Asset Based Community Development model to incorporate the unique strengths, character, and history of each community and region, creating a multiplier effect built on effective and sustainable partnerships. We work with school districts, farmland trusts and non-profit farms, local entrepreneurs, and community partners to produce measurably better results for students while supporting the kinds of small businesses that will be engines of Maine’s green economy. Maine Farm Enterprise Schools are:
A school reform “replication model”: A set of practices, structures, supports, and professional development practices that produce better outcomes for students, improve retention of high-quality teachers, and provide skilled, eager workers.
A social entrepreneurship economic development model: A linked co-operative of sustainable business that share infrastructure, insurance, marketing, technology, and develop experiential learning partnerships with the school component.
A community-based investment model: A structure that allows each community to leverage existing school, economic development and social service funding to transform neglected community assets into engines of a new, sustainable and local economy.
Each host community develops a plan to leverage existing Quality of Place assets in a way that strengthens collaboration and incubates new enterprises connected to one or more clusters: Green Energy and Building, Farms and Food Security, and the Creative Economy.
